


A Slave and Her Servant

by Bridthesin



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, F/M, Masturbation, Post-Canon, Really really slow burn, Rough Sex, Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, There'll be some fatasies and masturbation to tide you over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:52:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 61,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7201313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bridthesin/pseuds/Bridthesin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty years after Project Purity was finished and Charon's contract is in the hands of an impulsive Brotherhood Knight who foolishly decides to fight a woman in a down and out fighting pit.</p><p>Poppy is a slave raised by raiders and sold as soon as she turned sixteen and has been fighting for her life in this filthy mud pit for almost ten years.  She knows very little about her life before the raiders, living on a farm with a loving mother and father.</p><p>The two are thrown together and set out on a quest to find out about her past but they find out they have more in common than they realised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unorthodox Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> So the muse has hit me with this big ghoulish stick this time and I just can't stop writing this specific story.
> 
> The story of Poppy and Charon is interspersed with memories about his time with the Lone Wanderer. Anything in Italics is one of these memories/flashbacks. They aren't in order, more they come up when Charon is reminded of little things (like actual memory works). I didn't want to dwell on a story that had been told many times before but I did want the reader to get a feel for what the Lone Wanderer was like.
> 
> I hope you like the characters, I tried to make then multidimensional and not too stereotyped but that can make it hard to get a grip on their personality.
> 
> Anyway... Enjoy.

          Poppy (such a stupid girly name) had grown numb to the violence at a very early age, in fact the first time had been the big, life changing event that brought her here. Here was a fighting pit and Poppy was a slave, trained to fight from a young age. She had no idea what had made the raider gang that killed her family decide to turn her into a fighter and not a whore but who knows. One sunny afternoon when she was six she'd been playing in the mud in their farm when her father sounded the alarm. He had taken too much time trying to get her into a safe place to think about himself they had dismembered him with a flurry of bullets before he got a shot in and she had just watched.

          What they had done to her mother was behind the closed doors of their tumble down shack. At the time she had struggled and tried to help when she heard the screams, but with years of knowledge she's realized exactly what was going on in there. Now she's thankful she didn't see.

          The raiders became her new family and somehow let her keep the name Poppy, she hated the name but it was all she had left of her real family. For some inexplicable reason the gang leader, a vicious man named Scar (yes just Scar, raiders aren't exactly imaginative) had taken a liking to her over the countless others they just sold on to Paradise Falls when they were done with them. According to Scar fighting was a good trade to have and so she was trained and proved to be quick and clever, not strong but able to dodge and swipe easily. It put her in good stead when Scar did eventually sell her to slavers at the age of sixteen and she ended up here… fighting for her life, just in a different way to the rest of the commonwealth. 

          In the pit there were no weapons, she was all too often underestimated and, though she could still die at the flip of a coin she did have access to medical help after fights. It could have been worse but really the skinny little thing, with her short hair and layers of bruises, longed for freedom and choices.

          That night would be different, another sudden and unexpected, life changing event was about to come her way on the steel boots of power armour. The Brotherhood of Steel rules the Wasteland outside DC and they were not known for being fair or kind. She dimly remembered her father telling her about them like he had known them well, recalling them almost fondly but she had never known them do anything good.

          Poppy herself had never seen a Brotherhood soldier before, they never came to the pit that had been her home for almost ten years. Back then, at sixteen, she was barely a woman and she would have probably thought the two men in power armour where knights from old tales, now at twenty-five she was too cynical for that bullshit. The oddest thing though was that they had a ghoul with them, ghouls were something she was more used to but this one was something else! He stood head and shoulders above the rest and she could tell that his milky blue eyes were scanning the room for threats. Who knew the Brotherhood were taking ghouls into their ranks now?

______________________

          Charon was not happy, he wasn't sure why his master was even here in a filthy hole that stank of blood and stale alcohol. It was little more than a glorified shack, built out of any misshapen wood that could be found lying around, the floor was simply the same dusty mud as outside and benches had been set on the incline of some sort of crater. They took a place above the rest of the crowd to watch the fight currently going on in a muddy pit that was sank below the seating with a railing around it's edge.

          The ghoul tried not to even glance at the two slaves fighting in the mud and filth below, the idea of slave fighting pits repulsed him, but he couldn't stop himself. He meant to just flick his eyes down for a second, enough to feed his curiosity then back to scanning the room for threats to his master. When he did look down though his stomach leapt into his throat as he saw a familiar face, a ghost of the past and a very brief happiness that died with him. But this was not him, this was a skinny girl, most likely some raiders mistake, malnourished from birth and sold as soon as she was old enough.

          Still he could see the tight muscles working under her skin, not an ounce of fat on her but she was strong and quick. For a moment he felt a consuming anger at the fact that this little thing was wearing next to nothing, no armour and no weapon and pitted against a tall, heavily muscled man. It was good for her that her opponent didn't know how to use those muscles, they were mostly for show with no core strength to back them up. The little scrappy girl defeated him easily and it seemed his master had made a decision,

          “Charon, I'm going to fight her do not move from this spot no matter what happens, that's an order” Knight Allen, his master told him. The soldier wasn't bad, for the most part, he liked to fight and drink, but then most soldiers did and Charon thought of him as a fair man. Mind you he kept the ghoul more like a well cared for pet than a friend, Charon was fed and clean, rarely punished and never in the harsh and ingenious ways of some old employers. But he was never spoken to outside of orders and after he had been given so much freedom in the past he felt starved for real socialization.

          Knight Allen had vanished into the crowd and Charon felt wholly uneasy at the idea of not being near his master. He couldn't protect him if he wasn't nearby and he was well aware of what fighting this wiry Little girl would entail. He ignored the announcement, forced to stand and watch as his master removed his power armour and placed it in the centre of the ring. The stupid man had clearly underestimated this girl, a mistake Charon would never have made and not just because she reminded him of the most dangerous person he had ever known.

___________________

          After her fight was over and her opponent was a mass of broken skin and pooled blood in the dirt Poppy paused, caught her breath and fought to keep the adrenaline surging through her veins from draining away and allowing her to feel her injuries. She wasn't done for the night yet, she didn't have the luxury of nursing her wounds until she was done. Slightly confused she watched as words were exchanged between the ghoul and one of the men, the rotten giant just nodded and stood to the side. The shining knight dipped his way through the crowd and not long after she lost sight of him an announcement blared over the crackling speakers,

          “For one night only we have a special guest fighter, none other than a Brotherhood knight, he will be taking on our own star fighter Poppy the Pummeler” (God where did they come up with this stuff) “and to make it fair the knight will relinquish his power armour to be set in the middle of the ring, whoever gets there first will get the advantage of the metal shell and almost certainly win the fight”

          Poppy’s mind raced, clearly no one expected her to win but she knew she could outrun the knight and get to the power armour first. But then what, she had no idea how to use it, she'd never even seen a set before… she just had to hope and pray she survived this.

____________________

          It was an annoyingly slow process with lots of stupid posturing before the suit was set up in the centre and the knight stepped out. The second the recording of a bell played through the speakers Poppy was off and able to copy what she had observed the knight do only in reverse. She twisted a wheel on the back and the suit opened up like some sort of gaping maw. As she stepped in Poppy felt a hand wrap around her wrist, gripping tight enough that she felt her bones scrape together but she twisted her way out of it and the metal hissed and squeeled closed around her.

          The crowd above were roaring now but the sound was dim in her ears, like it was filtered through water. She felt strong, invincible even, in the armour that felt part protection, part sarcophagus.

          Her usual advantage of speed was gone as her well honed muscles screamed in pain for her to just lift one leg and bring it crashing down an inch from it's previous position. Poppy was fit though, despite her lack of strength and a quick learner so by the time someone in the crowd had thrown a tire iron to the knight she had mastered walking in a straight line.

          A clanging metal on metal sound rang through her head leaving her deafened and her head ringing as the tire iron collided with her tough shell. With all her might she lifted an arm, almost bringing a fist down on her opponent's head but the soldier dodged and peppered more blows around her armour. Poppy managed to bring up a foot and make a glancing blow on the man's shin that brought him crashing to the ground. She stood on his heel, wincing at the sound of breaking bones before repeating it with the other, leaving the man's ankles as little more than splintered bones and gore. Feeling safe that he could no longer walk on his shattered feet she took the suit to a far corner and clambered out with little grace. She leaned over the broken man, she didn't take delight in it but she was impressed that he kept a straight face when he must have been in such pain,

          “Do you surrender?” she asked him, being sure to cast her shadow over his face, just so, for maximum intimidation, she really didn't want to have to beat this man to death,

          “Never” he spat through gritted teeth. Sudden pain blossomed in her temple and she was knocked the the side, he had managed to lift the crowbar High enough, even from his position on the ground and hit her with it just hard enough to knock her for six but not leave her unconscious. She shouldn't have leaned in to talk to him, it was a stupid rookie move that could have easily lost her her life.

          It didn't surprise anyone when he struggled over to her and attempted to do the same again but she was quick and he was hurt, she caught it and twisted until the tension in His wrist forced him to let go. What did surprise everyone, the watching crowd gasping as one, was Poppy not simply using the thick, bent iron to cave in his skull with one hit, after all most of them knew she could. Instead she started beating on his torso, leaving ugly welts and tearing at his clothes and the undefended skin underneath. Occasionally pausing during her onslaught she attempted to give him chance to surrender and live but he wouldn't do it and after some time it was clear he would die first.

          Confusion marred Poppy’s usual clear, neat features as the knight, his breath heaving from a probable collapsed lung and his torso reduced to a strips of torn and bruised flesh, lifted out some sort of paper and held it out to her. With a shake of his hand and a rustle of the thick grade paper she realised it was meant for her and leaned down to take it,

          “Look after him” the man was able to wheeze before he gave up completely and fell back, his eyes closed and almost peaceful, it wasn't clear if he was dead but it was clear he soon would be. The old speakers were busy announcing her the winner but Poppy barely noticed, instead turning the strange item around in her hands. It really was good quality paper, more like parchment and clearly meant to last a lifetime, there was writing on only one side, faded enough to be almost illegible so she could only make out the odd word.

____________________

          A sickening feeling ran through him as he watched the familiar yellowed paper pass from one hand to another. Released from Knight Allen's orders to stay put he immediately ran through the crowd and lept into the air, landing at the girls side.

          Wide eyes stared up at him as he appraised her again, this time as an employer and not a potential threat. She looked scared, her big Brown eyes, too big for her face, were pulled wide enough to see the whites around the irises. She was dirty, the layers of mud that were no doubt ground into her skin making her a few shades darker than her actual skin tone. She was also tall, much taller than he had thought looking down at her, in fact she stood not even a head shorter than him and her skinny frame rippled with taut muscles. He hoped she didn't like her current attire since it would not defend against a bullet or the roving eyes of a lot of unsavoury men out there. It consisted of little more than stained rags draped over her torso and ripped enough to leave little to the imagination, her small chest barely covered by the fabric and her… pert (wait… that's not right… employer remember) backside barely covered by what had clearly once been shorts but where now mostly shredded, stained fabric held on with a worn belt.

          As with most quick witted tacticians he was able to see all of this in a matter of seconds before spitting out his usual greeting to a new employer in a deadpan tone “You are my employer and now, for good or ill I serve you”

          “You what? Did you just vault over the bar's to get to me? Who the hell are you?” the girl screeched like a confused banshee, slamming down a foot and glaring at him with such a stare that he actually felt himself a little cowed. He refused to show it though, standing still and pulling himself a little taller even when the full force of an angry woman actually did manage to intimidate him.

          When a grime covered man in a filthy suit grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away from him he was in much more comfortable territory. When he saw her struggle to break free he knew exactly what to do, a feeling of safety in the familiar as well as his conditioning making him act on the threat. He cocked his shotgun, the same one as he had always had although most of the parts had been replaced by now, and pointed it at the man,

          “Release her” he growled, eyeing the man with almost bored judgement, same shit, different day. The man dropped his hold, an automatic reaction to the fear Charon instilled but he quickly rallied and took a step towards the ghoul looking angry. He didn't give the slave owner time to speak before blasting a hole in his filthy business suit. There was time for him to look down in confusion before he passed out from shock, left to bleed out on the floor where his essence joined with the bodily fluids of countless others who had died in the mud at his hand. Charon wished he could do more.


	2. For Good Or Ill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two, left with nothing but the clothes on their backs and Charon's weapons, think out what to do now. It'll take a lot to get used to each other.

          Charon’s new master… mistress he supposed, looked up at him with wide eyes, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. The ghoul almost laughed, instead he held it back and raised an eyebrow (or what little he had left of one) and spoke, “what are your orders?”

          “What? Orders? What are you on about?” the girl finally spat out at him, though after looking around at the panic setting in and the wastelanders who were running towards them she seemed to decide something, “let's get out of here”

          “As you wish” he nodded curtly at her and set off towards the nearest door, pushing, kicking and sometimes shooting angry patrons and slave owners aside. Once outside he lead the frightened looking girl to cover, managing to find a defensible shack not too far away. She flopped to the floor in a dark corner burying her small head in between her raised knees. Charon wasn't sure what he had done to deserve this, ending up the chattel of some raiders brat, good at hand to hand but probably never handled a gun. Still he had a job to do so he stood at the door waiting for something interesting to happen.

______________________

           Poppy's head was spinning, she felt drunk along with the nausea and impaired thinking that usually came with a bottle of moonshine. Exhaustion rattled her body dragging it down into the dry mud where she sat in the corner of an empty shack. Without him noticing she was peeking out between her knees at the ghoul in front of her and taking the opportunity to get a really good look.

          He was tall, taller by about a foot than her at her six foot, honestly she'd never seen someone so giant. He wore ratty armour that looked like it might once have been top notch but now it was a mess. The massive shotgun he had used to kill her master was slung across his back and Poppy was sure there would be no chance of her being able to even lift the thing. That made her give up the idea of outrunning him and just being free.

          Never having had the opportunity to properly examine a ghoul she just stared at what was left of his skin and the red bundles of muscle where it was missing. He was mostly covered with dirty but serviceable clothes (more than could be said for hers which could barely count as underwear by now) but she really studied his face and exposed forearms. He was well built, biceps bulging under the leathery skin and she felt the urge to touch him, to just feel what that skin might be like. More important things were creeping into her curious mind now though, like who the hell was he and what the hell was she supposed to do next.

____________________

          “What do I do now?” her shaky voice rose up from where her head was buried, curled in on herself as she was,

          “You are entitled to my services in combat” he could barely keep the sneer from his voice, the resemblance she had once had to his old master gone. She was weak and scared, the Lone Wanderer had been strong beyond words and this cage fighter was not him,

          “What's that supposed to mean?” she sounded desperate, but also a little pissed off,

          “You hold my contract, I will serve you as you order and you are entitled to my services in combat” he watched her unfurl from her upright fetal position, a burning rage in her eyes,

          “You mean this?” she waved his contract in the air and he nodded, “serve me? So you're a slave?”

          “I am not a slave” he growled, why must he go through this exact conversation with every employer?

          “Do you have a choice in who you work for?” he sighed irritability and shook his head, “Do you have a choice in what orders you follow?”

           “No” he spat, wishing she would stop with this line of questioning or with questions altogether,

           “Do you receive pay for these services?”

          “No”

          “Certainly sounds like a slave to me” she stopped talking and looked at that fucking paper deep in thought for a while, the blessed silence didn't last long enough for Charon’s liking, “You just saved me from slavery and here I am a slave owner… fuck… it's been like ten minutes and I'm already subjecting someone to the thing I hate. I could just destroy this stupid thing?”

            “I wouldn't do that”

           “Why?”

           “I am bound to that contract and I will kill whoever tries to destroy it” he had gone through a very similar conversation with the very man this little thing had reminded him of… it was like some kind of messed up deja-vu,

          “Would you be free then?” well this was new,

          “No, I would simply find the nearest person and give it to them”

          “Oh…,” her voice turned sad and she couldn't bring herself to look at him, “I would have done it you know, let you kill me if it meant you would be free. My one good act in this world” she was quiet for a moment, thinking, her hands running along the paper. He could almost feel it, like those hands were touching his parchment like skin, “what about if I gave it to you?”

          “I would give it to the nearest person, I cannot hold my own contract”

          “Oh… how about I just ordered you to do whatever you want”

          “I would still be bound to you, to protect you”

          “But other than that you could do what you wanted? So long as you keep me safe you can act as your own man, make your own choices?”

          “Yes”

          “Then that's my order, my only order. I order you to do whatever you want” he felt himself relax a little, this was strange but familiar like walking back along your own footsteps in the sand,

          “I had a similar order from a previous employer” he didn't know why he was telling her this but… the whole situation felt so familiar, “you remind me of him”

            “Was he kind?”

           “Yes”

          “Good” she lapsed back into thought for a time, “What's your name?”

           “Charon”

          “Like the ferryman… I'm Poppy”

          “Poppy” he turned the word around in his mouth, somehow it didn't fit her, “how do you know about the ferryman?”

          “My Dad used to read to me… he liked to tell me stories about myths and gods. Charon was his favourite” she looked sadly at her dirty hands, “what do we do now? I don't have any caps or weapons or anything”

          “When was the last time you slept?”

          “I managed a few hours last night, I always have to sleep with one eye open in there”

          “Now you have me”

          “But after that?”

          “Think about that after”

          “Oh… ok” with that she just curled up in a ball and was almost immediately asleep, unfortunately this left Charon alone with his thoughts. Thoughts about the past.

_____________________

_The stupid kid had walked right up to him and started asking question after question,_

_“Talk to Azrahkul” was all Charon said in reply but it was like the boy didn't care, he just kept going on without listening for an answer,_

_“Talk. To. Azrahkul.” This time the Ghoul put every ounce of venom he could into the words. Finally the little shit paid attention, blowing light locks of hair out of his podgy cheeked face he turned around and headed towards the bar with a muttered apology. Watching as the Vault Dweller talked to his disgusting excuse for a boss Charon held back a laugh at just how childish the kid was. Muddy vault suit covered with weak leather armour, a broken looking old rifle across his back, clean but messy blonde hair and his flushed child-like face all added to the voice yelling ‘GREEN’ in the ghouls mind. This barely minted vault dweller wouldn't last a day even if he managed to escape Azrahkuls clutches and avoid the inevitable slavery that would lead to._

_Charon wasn't laughing when he watched the exchange of a pitiful amount of caps and a yellowing piece of paper. He cursed his luck to end up with some wet behind the ears shut in as a master… still, couldn't be as bad as Azrahkul._

______________________

          The Sun shone through the cracks in the wood of the old shack casting little spotlights on the ground. Poppy woke up aching, probably due to sleeping on the uneven muddy floor but she had still slept better than she had in months. Looking around the dim shack she lost herself for a moment in how the dust motes danced in the thin stips of light. Then Charon shifted in his place by the door and she jumped before recognition slapped her like a truck,

          “Charon… you… you didn't sleep? Have you stood by that door all night?” she asked the tall shadowy figure,

          “I require little sleep” he answered in a grumpy tone that Poppy got the feeling she would have to get used to,

          “Well that has to stop, if you feel tired sleep… or you know rest at least… it would make me feel better”

          “Someone has to keep watch. Have you travelled in the wastes before?”

          “Yes but not since I was fifteen, I lived with a raider gang and we'd move around a lot” he nodded almost imperceptibly, like something had just been confirmed and she didn't like the idea that he might think she was a raider “I'm not a raider though, I grew up on a farm until I was around six… Scar and his gang killed my dad when he was busy trying to protect me. I don't really want to think about what they did to my mum before they killed her”

          “I am sorry” he actually sounded genuine, his scratchy, gravel filled voice turned sad,

          “I am entitled to your services in combat right? Sympathy isn't exactly part of the contract” she watched him for a moment, he didn't answer but seemed to herd his own face into a blank expression “do you know of anywhere we could go, somewhere I could get work and maybe find some clothes that don't show the majority of my ass?”

_____________________

           Charon found himself almost laughing but managed to catch himself just in time and remain stoic. Those clothes really did show off the majority of her everything.

          There was one place he knew he could go and be welcomed, where there was an empty house filled with clothes and guns, even books. It was somewhere she could find work and have the chance to recuperate and wash as well as train with those weapons. Perfect really only he didn't want to step foot in that town for a second, not after what happened, not after he knew it would bring back such awful memories. But now he had someone to protect, someone who needed it unlike the knight and someone who spoke to him like a person. That in itself was worth protecting… he made up his mind,

          “Megaton”

          “What?” he got the feeling she hadn't expected him to answer, he got a nasty thrill at being able to knock the proverbial stuffing out of an employer,

          “It is safe there, you can train”

          “Thank you Charon” he watched her pull herself up out of the mud and wipe it off what little clothing she did wear. Unfolding herself to her full height he was reminded just how tall she was, a shock in the wastes where food was scarce and people were usually small and malnourished “lead on McDuff”

           And he did lead on, despite his own reservations about the idea and how wary he was of this strange young woman.

____________________

          “Is that a bomb?” She asked incredulously,

          “Yes,” was all she got in reply. The journey had been long and exhausting and her new slave (she refused to let herself forget what he was, like some kind of mental self flaggelation) hadn't been much in the way of company. He had been good in a fight though, only around half an hour after setting off in god knows which direction (he could be leading her anywhere for all she knew) she had been shown just how little use hand to hand combat was in the wastes. An enraged radscorpion had popped casually out of the ground to the left of her and almost caught her leg in it's vicelike pincers. Thankfully speed and a quick reaction time was on her side and she gracefully stepped out of it's reach dropping into a fighting stance and pulling up her fists instinctually. It was only when she really looked at the thing that she knew her bare knuckles would do nothing, even if they did find an opening to take advantage of.

          Charon had pushed her skinny frame behind him, grumbling all the while and aimed his shotgun at it's face. The things head exploded into a deep green gooey mess, what she could only guess was blood and brain matter spreading in a splatter pattern around it's carcass. Her ghoul bodyguard pulled out a knife and removed several chunks of meat and the stinger before grunting at her to keep moving and walking onwards with no explanation as to why he had cut up the corpse.

          “The bomb has been deactivated for years,” a dark skinned man in a dusty cowboy hat approached them, “my god!” His face turned as pale as it could when his eyes landed on Charon, “is it really you?”

          “That depends,” the giant behind her answered in what she was coming to know as his usual gruff manner,

          “Charon? Well you haven't changed a bit,” the man said, ignoring the gruffness,

          “I am a ghoul”

          “I remember playing with your dog as a boy… well it wasn't really your dog, more… his…” he trailed off and Poppy could sense a sadness about him when he spoke about the past. The man brightened and turned towards her, almost like he had wiped the sad thought from his mind, “I'm Sheriff Harden Simms, Charon here knew my father as Sheriff Simms but I followed in dad's footsteps. I like to welcome all newcomers to the town personally, so, young lady,” here he looked her up and down trying very hard to disguise the hunger in his eye's as he presented her with his hand. She couldn't wait to get into some new clothes and wondered what it would be like to have a real bath as she shook his hand, something she only knew to do because of shaking before a fight, “what is your name?”

          “Poppy… I don't have a last name, I'm sorry” she felt ashamed to have to tell him this, back in the pit (and before with the raiders) it was a normal thing, not having a surname but here it seemed the other way around. She could feel Charon glaring at the man, as though it was the sheriff's fault she was upset,

          “Now don't be sorry about something like that Miss, we have all sorts in this town… maybe you should go see Nova and Gob, they're both… em… well… they both used to be…”

          “Slaves?” She said plainly, knowing the man was only stumbling over his words out of politeness and not menace,

          “Unless you were a raider… we used to have a raider here but he died a while back”

          “I'm not a raider. I was a slave but I'm not now” he looked curiously at her but she really didn't want to give anymore details than that so simply ignored it,

          “Is the house still… as it was?” Charon asked, getting her off the hook of more questioning but making her pull the curious face in his direction at the idea of a house,

          “Yes, it's just as it was… we put it on the market after you didn't show up for years but no one wanted to take it after… well you know. It was in his will that you get the place so if you want it it's all yours” wait… what? Poppy thought, looking quickly between the two men, I accidentally get a slave and he has a house? What the hell.

____________________

          The girl… woman (Charon thought of everyone as a child these days) stood in the center of the house in awe, he got the feeling she was one moment away from stretching out her arms and spinning like some princess from an old world movie,

          “Uhum,” he cleared his dry, raspy throat, snapping her out of whatever trance she was in,

          “Charon… you have a house?”

          “No Mistress, you have a house”

          “What?” He felt a little smug at the wide eyed, shocked expression on her face, even if he was about to hand over his property to her,

          “I am not able to own anything myself, everything that is mine belongs to you,”

          “BULLSHIT,” he was a little taken aback by her sudden, angry outburst and took a step back once again cowed by the passion in this woman, “sorry Charon but… well you have to admit that's bullshit”

          “I do not understand Mistress”

          “You can own whatever you want Charon, I'm not going to take anything away from you… god dammit can we not just pretend you aren't my slave?”

          “I am no one's slave” bile rose in his throat at the suggestion, the second one in twenty four hours, that he was a slave, “you are entitled to my services in combat”

          “That doesn't mean I get your house, or anything else that is rightfully yours, it's not fair”

          “It is in the contract”

          “Yea well I can't read the damn thing so you'll have to either ignore it and be free to act as you wish or explain to me how and why you are bound to something that faded away years ago,”

          “Decades”

          “What?”

          “It has been many decades since my contract was legible, yet here I am”

          “OK, sit down and explain all of this to me”

          “Did you not want to change?” he didn't like the idea of sitting and explaining his servitude to her while his eyes were almost forced to roam over her barely covered body,

          “Oh yes and… is there anywhere nearby that has a public bath or something, it'd be nice to feel clean”

          “Upstairs”

          “There's a bath in this place?”

          “A shower, I assume it will suffice?”

          “Yes… perfect” she spun on her heels and went running up the stairs. He could hear doors opening and closing as she tried to find the makeshift bathroom his old employer had set up so many years ago.

____________________

_“It shouldn't be too hard right?” Daniel said, an inexplicable amount of hope in his voice, “I mean, Rivet City has warm showers and that place is full of obnoxious bigots… if we put our heads together there's no way we can't do something they can”_

_“Rivet City is surrounded by water” Charon reminded him, “and I cannot shoot you a shower”_

_“Now I'm picturing you hunting showers out in the wild,” the ghoul raised an eyebrow and stared down at him, though not too far down the kid had sprung up like a weed and was not far off being as tall as Charon, “oh come on, don't be such a naysayer we can do anything”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW I always think of Charon's shotgun being a bit like Triggers broom in Only Fools And Horses "Maintained it for 20 years. This old broom's had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time."
> 
> Also BTW I'm writing in that Charon is physically attracted to her right off the bat. He's never had a female employer and Poppy is 25 and very pretty so, although he doesn't want to let himself think about it Charon is... Turned on by her. Even for a guy who hasn't had a lot of a sex drive during 200 years of servitude I think it's realistic that he would feel like this after being suddenly thrust into spending all his time with a woman. Especially one who wasn't wearing much when he first met her.
> 
> However it's just lust for a long time, no matter how much stronger it gets and how his self control on the matter is slowly broken down. Actual romantic feelings don't come until a lot later and he's much much less ready to embrace them.


	3. A Few Drinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pair head down to the bar and Charon discovers Poppy can drink like a fish and do a few other impressive things in a bar.

          Poppy danced around in front of a cracked and filthy mirror. Honestly she could barely see herself in it but the swirling pink blur was enough to leave her ecstatic. Once she was clean, the shower leaving her pink and pale and gleaming, she had wrapped herself up in a stained towel and gone to seek out clothes. One bedroom of the place contained a dresser filled with armour and suits, a well worn set of leathers looking like the only thing that had been used.

          The second bedroom was where she stood now. Despite the run down and battered furnishings it had a definite air if the feminine about it and she had found a wardrobe full of dresses along with a more fitted version of the road leathers and a set of armour let out in the chest. A pretty, clean pink number called out to her and she slipped it on over her bare figure making a note to find out about underwear. It was fitted at the waist and had big black buttons where the wide straps met the bodice. Finished off with a big skirt that came up a little short on her tall, thin frame coming to just above the knee rather than just below. Poppy had never felt so beautiful.

____________________

          The mystery that was his new employer came all but running down the stairs, stopping in front of him and performing an odd maneuver he once knew as a twirl,

          “Look Charon, I'm wearing a dress,” she announced with a swelling of pride. Although he didn't want to admit to it and she would hardly notice a change, he was speechless. The scruffy, mud covered, barely clothed scrapper he had picked up was not the same person as this grown woman that stood before him. Now that she was clean he could see her skin was pale, a subtle smattering of freckles dusting her bare arms and her cheeks that were flushed from running down the stairs and spinning. She had a faded scar that ran from her temple to her jaw down the side of her face and countless others along her arms. Charon liked seeing scars on his employer, they were proof that she was tough and had survived countless attacks with little more than these scars. He didn't let it show but the long ignored man in Charon reared his ugly head and took notice before he was swiftly pushed back into the recesses of the bodyguard's mind,

          “You are,” was all he said, letting his eyes wander out across the room, away from her,

          “Do you like it?”

          “I have no opinion of it,” it was barely a lie, he had no opinion he would allow himself to acknowledge,

          “Well I like it, I might live in dresses the whole time we're here… do you want to go to the bar?” he honestly would like nothing more, he really needed a drink but he wasn't so sure about this place anymore, it wasn't exactly the same Megaton he left all those years ago. Poppy needed to be kept safe and he didn't know how to do that when he no longer knew who was a threat and who wasn't. He really hoped he hadn't let himself get too sloppy while his contract was held by Brotherhood soldiers who could easily look after themselves. Reluctantly he nodded and led her out the door, unable and unwilling to deny her what she wanted.

____________________

          Gob's Saloon was busy, the tumbledown shack filled with grumbling chatter and hunched patrons looking at nothing but the drinks being nursed in front of them. Dotted about amongst the small groups of moody old men were larger parties who spoke animatedly, their happy chatter lifting the spirits of the bar considerably. Some of the older patrons looked up at them as they entered and, upon spotting Charon, returned wide eyes back to their drinks. The younger crowd paid them no attention, enjoying the warm spring evening and conversion too much to care about two new people.

          An older woman spotted them from a corner, the laugh lines around her wrinkled eyes scrunching as she caught sight of Charon. As she moved closer, twisting in and out of the people in the bar Poppy could see that her short hair, while red underneath, was covered in a smattering of grey. She took note of the practical, damaged but clean clothes she wore and the way she carried herself with pride on her aging body,

          “Charon!” She declared, pulling the ghoul into a warm, if not awkward embrace before pulling away and holding him at arm's length to look him up and down, “my god you haven't changed a bit!” her voice was musical under the gravel of many years of smoking,

           “Ghoul” was all he said in return, his voice outmatching hers for amount of gravel and with a gruff tone in place of her musical one. The woman's attentions turned towards Poppy,

          “And who is this?” She looked her up and down, clearly giving an appraisal of what she saw when her thin lips turned up at one corner into a knowing smirk, “have you got yourself a pretty little smoothskin girlfriend?”

          “NO!” Charon barked, causing everyone in the saloon to pause in what they were doing and look up for about a second before, slowly, normal service resumed. Poppy felt a little offended by how quick and adamant he was at denying that kind of relationship, though she couldn't blame him when she thought of how she would feel being mistaken for her old master's girlfriend,

          “I'm Nova, grumpy and I go way back. I assume he isn't going to introduce me, what's your name doll?”

          “Poppy” she answered, not entirely sure why she was being so timid when this woman was so welcoming. Maybe it was the idea of having to explain their real relationship to this Nova, but that wasn't going to be a problem as was proven when the older woman spoke again,

          “I assume you have possession of a certain piece of paper” Poppy couldn't help but look shocked, “oh don't look so surprised, like I said we go way back. Though I wouldn't make that little bit of information public knowledge if I were you, for both your sakes”

          “I figured that one out” Nova seemed to change her appraisal just a little at that with a raised eyebrow,

          “Come, come, sit at the bar and talk to me, meet my lovely husband!”

          “You got married?” Charon spat out in shock, Nova just grinned with pride as she shooed a couple of customers out of their stools at the bar. Poppy was genuinely surprised to find both the seat and the bar top, while ragged and old, were immaculately clean and the rows of bottles behind the bar neat and organized. What she knew of drinking establishments was that they usually went hand in hand with filth and mess,

            “Oh dear husband of mine!” Nova shouted theatrically towards a doorway that presumably led to some some sort of back room,

          “God what woman?” came the unmistakable rumble of a ghoul voice raised to almost a shout and getting louder as it's owner drew nearer. Through a ratty (but again mostly clean) curtain pushed a short and skinny ghoul. The irritated look on his face transforming to shock when he saw the two of them, “well I'll be damned… Charon?” Her ghoul bodyguard just grunted in the bartenders direction,

           “You two are married?” Poppy asked curious,

          “Yep, a lot's changed in the last… what 30 years? Since Daniel changed it” Nova said with a grin,

          “Who’s Daniel?” the barmaid looked over to Charon and rolled her eyes,

          “Another story for another time kid… anyway what can I get you?”

          “Whiskey, maybe leave the bottle if Charon wants the same?” She directed this as a question towards the stoic ghoul sat beside her,

          “I will have whatever you wish”

          “Oh god you haven't slipped back into that have you?” Nova scolded him but he simply ignored her and went on looking at his employer,

           “Is whiskey what you want to drink Charon?” Poppy asked him, making sure to phrase the question and carefully school her tone into something he couldn't answer anyway but with his own opinion,

          “Yes” he said simply and Poppy nodded at him proudly before being left with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses that were clouded with age.

____________________

          It had gotten late but the surrounding crowd had barely thinned out. Charon had been drinking and had had enough to feel a slight buzz, quite a feat for a ghoul especially one with a liver like his. He was rather impressed that the woman beside him had kept up and was barely drunker than he was, her words slurring a little but otherwise unaffected.

          By this point she knew Gob and Nova's life story and they knew hers. The two had explained about Moriarty and their servitude, followed by his untimely death, carefully skirting around bringing up Daniel again, for which Charon was eternally grateful. Poppy had explained about her recent slavery and time in the fighting pits. Gob and Nova had told her about running the bar and their small, simple wedding some fifteen years ago and she had told them about her parents and her time with the raiders. All the while Charon replied with nods, grunts and the occasional yes or no whilst keeping a keen eye on the bar and enjoying the slight buzz of the alcohol.

          He tensed up when Poppy got up from her stool and stood by his side,

          “I'm going to find the toilet” she told him plainly but surprisingly polite for a drunk woman who had been partialy brought up by raiders. He realised that was one of the things that struck him as odd about her, she was, for the most part, well spoken and polite despite her… unusual upbringing.

          It was while he mused on this and she listened to Nova explaining how to get to the public restrooms that he felt the presence of someone standing far too close to his employer. A tall and hefty older man, probably around 40, was stood directly behind her, leaning in as if to whisper something in her ear. Before he could reach for his knife and subdue the man Poppy acted with baffling speed, her movements little more than a blur before they stopped. The man was pinned to the bar under her weight, she had grabbed his wrist and twirled so that his body was in front of hers and his arm twisted behind his back. Charon could hear the crunching of the bones in his wrist behind his child-like whimpering as Poppy put pressure on the arm held in a vice like grip,

          “What's your name?” she asked, her voice slick with venom,

          “J-Johnny but-but people call me Squirrel” the grown man, almost twice his employers weight and age stuttered,

          “Right Squirrel Johnny, you do not touch me without my permission and pass this on to everyone you know as a warning, next time someone does that I won't be so gentle” she moved as if to get up and let him go but Charon held out a hand to stop her, hovering slightly over the soft skin of her arm he didn't dare touch,

          “Squirrel? You're one of the Little Lamplighters” he said, it was statement, he remembered rescuing this arsehole from slavers when he was little more than a child. He'd been an ungrateful shit back then too. He and the Vault Dweller had taken out the whole of Paradise Falls that day (with the help of a few others versed in combat) unfortunately it hadn't been long before new slavers with hopes of outdoing Eulogy had moved in in their place.

____________________

_The kid was grinning at his side, somehow this barely out of his teens wimp had found and was successfully operating a mini-gun. Charon baffled at how Daniel had proven time and again to be both stronger and smarter than he looked. He couldn't baffle for long though as he stood back to back with his employer, the tall twenty year old coming up just past his shoulders. Slavers were running at them from every angle and the bodyguard was on high alert, splintering bone and ripping through flesh with his shotgun rounds every time someone got close to his friends back._

_The two of them caught their breath, surrounded as they were with a circle of mangled and bleeding corpses, each of them torn apart by the quick spray of the mini-gun or the expert shots of Charon's trusty combat shotgun. Sounds of continued slaughter could be heard from the other side of a dividing wall made of cars, along with irritating shouts about tunnel snakes from the most annoying part of their group,_

_“What now?” Daniel asked,_

_“Eulogy” the kid nodded, he never expected Charon to talk much or add explanations that could be avoided he just tended to understand what his bodyguard meant without them._

_Eulogy Jones was in his usual place, they had found he almost always resided in the broken down cinema from previous scouting trips. Charon had insisted they do their homework before attacking the place and it had already proven to be useful. The king of the slavers smiled sinisterly at them from his place luxuriating in his satin covered heart shaped bed, two slave collar wearing women at either side of him,_

_“I see you managed to make it through the rabble outside. I should have been out there to help but I think I may have underestimated you, I didn't for one second think you'd make it this far. Congratulations kid, you've outdone my expectations of you but if you think you're going to be able to kill me… well you should think again” the man was infuriatingly calm, stretched out in his showy red suit on his tacky red bed like they hadn't just gunned down all of his men,_

_“Let the girls go, they can leave this place and live a normal life. I already switched off the other slaves collars but these two don't seem to be on the same circuit” Daniel always spoke too much to those he was about to kill. At first Charon had thought it weakness, hesitation because he didn't want to start a fight but now he saw it for what it was, lulling enemy's into a false sense of security. The kid was bright enough to use people underestimating him to his advantage,_

_“That's not going to happen, you see these two lovely ladies are special. They're both brainwashed to be madly in love with whoever owns them, they will fight to the death for me” he tapped the 10mm pistols holstered at each of the girls hips,_

_“Sell them to me then” that one shocked Charon, how many brainwashed slaves was this Vault Dweller going to have following him around by the end of this? In Charon's opinion one was more than enough,_

_“So you can shoot me without them to help defend me… not going to happen, I didn't underestimate you that much kid”_

_“OK then” with a swift glance at his bodyguard the kid drew his favourite gun and put a considerable amount of bullets in Eulogy’s skull before the slaver had a chance to react, his head lolled and he crashed back against the bedding, brain matter leaking into the sheets with the streams of blood. Charon jumped into action and filled the two women with buckshot (he hated using buckshot but by now it was the only ammo he had left)._

_Even with their chest's torn into ragged mess, the fabric of their dresses matted into the bloody pulp the two slaves kept coming. Thankfully their aim was terrible when they were staggering forward full of the tiny balls of lead. With slowed their movements the ghoul was able to fill them with enough buckshot to bring them both crashing to the ground dead. He still shot them both again, just in case and looked over at his employer trying to hide his prideful grin._

_Daniel was slumped in the corner, holding a hand uselessly to one shoulder and screwing his eyes together in an attempt not to cry out in pain. All Charon could think were imaginative curses as he fell to the aid of the employer he had not been able to protect,_

_“One of them got me Charon” the kid croaked through the pain, “shit, why do shoulder wounds hurt so much”_

_“Let me see” his young employer moved his hand aside and the ghoul was able to see the grizzly ripped muscle of a deep entry wound. He pulled Daniel up enough to look for a matching hole in the back of his shoulder but there was none, “no exit wound”_

_“That means you have to dig it out right” Daniel hissed through clenched teeth, Charon simply nodded, “Fuck”_

_The kid rarely swore and his friend and bodyguard knew him well enough to know swearing meant he was in serious pain. He tried to work quickly with the extensive first aid kit his employer insisted they bring everywhere. Digging the bullet out was a gruesome task, the noise of squelching fluids and tearing muscle was easily the worst part. The kid did surprisingly well, only screaming out a few times before the small 10mm bullet was out and clattered to the floor along with a fair share of blood and matted flesh. A stimpak and alcohol rub did the rest, the now clean wound knitting back together with delicate skin and muscles. It would be weeks before it was truly healed, the area of the wound being susceptible to breaking or tearing until then, stimpaks could only do so much._

_Altogether they spent six days in Little Lamplight after returning the rescued children. The easily excitable little ones were enough to keep Daniel amused for that long so his shoulder had time to heal. By the sixth day he was restless and wanted to move on with his quest, so they did. After all Charon would follow his friend to the ends of the earth and not just because he had to._


	4. Story Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunk Poppy and a slightly tipsy Charon return home, he shouldn't have drank so much, it leaves him open to answering questions he would otherwise ignore.

          By the end of their night drinking Poppy was staggering drunk, Charon was far gone enough to let his guard drop a little and every patron in the bar was suitably afraid of the two of them. He was the one who decided home was the best idea when Nova brought up the idea of a third bottle of Whiskey. While he could easily drink more it would impair him too much, something he was not willing to do around such a new employer. That and he had the sneaking suspicion his charge would pass out against the bar if she kept going much longer.

          To his great surprise when she staggered as she got off the stool she reached out for his arm, grasping the bare flesh there, leathery skin, exposed muscle and all. She showed no disgust or even the slightest hint of flinching away when she came into contact with his grizzled hide. In fact, she had jostled and tugged him about until one arm was resting securely under her shoulders and her bare arm wrapped around his neck. Like that he assisted her back to their home. He wasn't used to people being comfortable enough around him to be supported in such a manner. Hell he wasn't used to people being tall enough to be supported in such a manner, the average wastelander would be about a foot off the ground if he carried them like this. Poppy however was able to take stumbling steps even when he was extended to His full height. It was refreshing.

____________________

          Back in the house she stood before him, swaying slightly as he went to fetch her water. He regretted the attempt to sober her up when it worked and she looked at him with curious eyes covered slightly with the film of drunkenness.

          “By the way who owned this place before? Sheriff Simms said something about a will,” he knew the question was coming, had mentally prepared himself for it but even so it hit him in the gut, especially when he was just drunk enough to open up to this kind of interrogation,

          “A kid that was one of a kind”

          “Was he your old… employer? The one you said was nice?”

          “Yes”

          “What was his name?”

          “Daniel”

          “I feel like I'm playing twenty questions, can't you just tell me?” he sighed and gestured over to the sofa. She clearly wasn't used to dresses because when, in her inebriated state, she first sat down it was close to obscene and Charon was glad he was sat next to her and not in a position to get a full view of her open legs. With a slight giggle she adjusted herself and sat down in a more ladylike manner and he hoped she would not slip up like that in public, he’d had enough problems keeping unwanted men away from her in her other outfit. Distractions like that over he had no reason not to start his story,

          “Have you heard of the Vault Dweller?” he started easy to get the both of them used to this… talking thing,

          “Yes of course, he's a legend, one of the few people the slavers are scared of… wait is that who's house this is?” he simply nodded and waited for the next question, her drunken face lighting up with realisation “so he was your mast-... um I mean employer”

          “He was”

          “So who's clothes am I wearing now?”

          “Her name was Moira, she worked here in town and they…” he trailed off, not entirely sure what to call the tempestuous relationship in which she was just as likely to get Daniel killed in some stupid experiment as to live happily ever after,

          “They were together?”

          “Yes”

          “How come they have separate rooms then?”

          “They were both hot headed, most of the time when we were here they slept in her room but… sometimes they would argue”

          “So the three of you traveled together?” that would have been close to Charon's idea of hell, still not as bad as Azrahkul though,

          “No, he wanted her to come with us but she never did”

          “That's sad”

          “Yes”

          “Did he give up your contract?”

          “No, he died” this was getting towards territory he didn't want to go to but he had started to answer her questions and he couldn't stop now, still she sensed his reticence and changed the subject… well a little at least,

          “Tell me about the contract, what are the rules?” This was better, he could answer these questions and while thinking about the paper ball and chain around his ankle made him angry it was something he was accustomed to,

          “First, you are entitled to my services in combat, my goal in life is to keep you safe”

          “I can get behind that… what else?”

          “I cannot cause harm to come to you,” she thought about this one, it looked like she was trying to twist it around to fit into her booze addled mind. With a look of confusion and a shake of the head she indicated that she didn't understand, “I can't hurt you, nor can I purposefully let you get hurt,”

          “So you couldn't let me step on a landmine you knew about just to get rid of me?” He nodded, “OK, that sounds… as fair as this is going to get. What next?”

          “You are to act on my behalf in all legal matters, I am unable to defend myself in court or own property. Everything that I own, in effect, belongs to you”

          “What's court?”

          “A pre war thing where it was decided if someone had broken the law and how to punish them if they had”

          “So like, if I ordered you to break the law… back then I mean… you wouldn't be able to blame me, I could just say it was all your fault?”

          "Yes"

          “Well that's shit… but not really relevant. Next?”

          “Violence on your part invalidates the contract”

          “What does that mean?”

          “You cannot hurt me, if you do I can forget the contract and defend myself” he felt a bit like he was talking to a two year old when he was trying to get her drunk brain to understand. He was eternally glad he hadn't chosen to say the rules word for word, they were full of lengthy legal jargon that meant nothing in this wasteland,

          “Would that mean you would be free if I hit you?”

          “I do not know”

          “We could try it”

           “I may be compelled to kill you, are you willing to risk that if there's a chance it may not work?”

          “Humm… I suppose not, at least if it's not a done deal and you might still be forced to give your contract to someone else”

          “Exactly, you just got your freedom. Don’t give that up for me,”

          “I’m not selfish” she said this in a pained way that warned him she was close to tears. He couldn't blame her, it had been a rollercoaster the past two days and she had not yet dealt with the emotions of being free and suddenly holding his contract. Plus she was drunk, though he had not had a female employer before (well not really) he was well aware that women could get emotional when drunk. Honestly so could a lot of men, they were more likely to deny it outright though,

          “You do not strike me as selfish,” he said in an attempt to hold back her tears,

          “I'm not a bad person,”

          “No, I do not think you are”

          “I've killed so many people but it's not like I had a choice”

          “Me too” Charon had not expected such a true and candid reaction and it seemed neither had she, her big, brown, doe eyes looked up at him and they sparkled with unshed tears as she stared, really stared at his face. He had to fight hard to remain expressionless as their eyes met and she looked so sad for him, there was a feeling of deep understanding in her gaze that unnerved him no end.

          Eventually, after what felt like an age she shook her head as if to dislodge an unpleasant feeling and looked back at him with a smile,

          “What else?” the confusion must have shown on Charon's face because Poppy looked away and elaborated, “the contract, what else is on the contract”

          “Oh, you may make any request or order of me that is connected in any way to combat. If you want me to fetch you something from the shop that is up to me but if you want me to cross the wasteland, where there will be danger you can order that”

          “Well I don't intend to make any orders of you than the one I already made so that one's a moot point… I guess everything I ask of you is a request so you can say no to anything,”

           “That is not strictly how it works but I will bear that in mind,”

          “What do you mean ‘not strictly how it works’?”

          “There may be things that you say or do that I read as an order, I will be compelled to complete them. Though it does… mean something to me that you would not intend them that way,” it was like this odd girl sensed that he was uncomfortable talking about his emotions and her eye's snapped up to him again. She didn't mention it though, just smiled to herself enigmatically like she had just discovered something he hadn't meant to reveal,

          “What do you mean by… compelled?”

          It took him some time to figure out how to answer this one, especially thinking through the fog of residual alcohol, “do you ever get cravings? Like urges to eat a certain thing or do a certain thing?”

          “Yes, but it's not like I got to give into them often” she let out a breathy laugh like she had made a joke, even though it was at her own expense,

          “It feels similar to that, but more so, the closest thing I can think of is having a psychologist explain a disorder to me before the war. It was called OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder, people with it feel the need to do things, often silly things like cleaning every inch of the house or checking the oven exactly twenty times. If they don't do it they are filled with a gut wrenching sense of dread, as though their subconscious is convinced something terrible will happen”

          “That sounds awful”

          “It is simply my life”

          “You know that's the longest thing you've ever said to me”

          “I am aware” he could feel his defenses closing to her as the lulling effect of the alcohol dripped from his mind. A sudden reminder that he had let them go in the first place saw them slamming down again,

          “Are you drunk Charon?”

          “Not anymore” he refused to look at her and, despite occasional questions and prodding he wouldn't answer in more than one word again. Honestly he was mortified that he had spoken to her so openly at all, it was so unlike him he wasn't entirely sure why he had done it.

____________________

          Poppy laid in bed feeling annoyingly sober again, she always hated having to fall asleep sober it meant her brain had the chance to pile up the angsty, uncomfortable questions. Like, for example, why Charon had started to open up to her only to slam down his defences again like shutters on a shop window. This was bugging her no end, she had looked at him and started to see glimpses of years of pain and loneliness, things that she herself knew only too well. He had showed her a side of himself that she realised was not far from who she was, tough and unforgiving but in the end just broken and confused. She just wanted to be his friend, after all he had already seen a side of her few people did. The first time he met her she had been unable to hide the fear she always felt but never showed and that had opened up the floodgates to her showing him her childish side and her easy excitement. Poppy trusted this man and she didn't entirely know why.

          Giving up on sleeping sober she decided to find some booze. Her bare feet patted on the uneven wood as she made her way down the rickety stairs. They didn't creak, she had snuck enough booze away from her filthy creep of a master to know how to sneak her way about a house and she got the distinct feeling her bodyguard would not be happy about her getting drunk again.

          A silent shape in the living room made her pause, Charon himself was sat on the sofa, his back to her, a bottle of beer in one hand and a book in the other. Making her way across the room in a crouch she attempted to see what he was reading, hoping to keep going past him to get her own alcohol and maybe something else. Unfortunately she wasn't that good and he jumped and spun around, knife in hand and ready to defend the home,

          “Fuck Charon” she yelped, jumping back out of his reach he simply glared and put the knife away in his boot. She almost didn't notice his gaze travel up and down her body, almost, “what are you reading?”

          “Dante's inferno” he grunted at her, well she clearly wasn't going to get much conversion here,

          “I'm going to get some water, do you want anything?” He waved the bottle in her direction to indicate that no, he didn't want anything. After searching through the cabinets fruitlessly for a while she heard a grunt that was almost like laughter from the direction of the couch, “something to say?”

          “Booze and chems are in the back” he pointed without even looking up at her and she bowed her head and shamefully slinked through into a large storeroom that looked like it had been added onto the house somewhat recently. A quick search found a small whiskey bottle, just enough to get a buzz for sleep and a canister of jet. Wondering how long he had known what she was there for she attempted to pass him without any further conversation, “jet will kill you you know” she ignored him and went upstairs.

          With the whiskey in her veins she inhaled just a little of the Chem, barely any but just enough to make her head spin and her eyes feel heavy. It was like her breathing had slowed and every sensation was dulled but at the same time the softness of her blanket and the slight squish of the dingy old mattress was heightened tenfold. In a beautiful dim world, where she felt like she was floating just above the bed she drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note: while I don't actually have OCD I do have a lot of OCD tendencies without it actually being a disorder. Mine center around things being even and lined up, if a picture is slightly tilted or something isn't in the center I get a horrible gut feeling... Similar to that feeling you get when you know something is wrong but can't quite figure out why.
> 
> I kind of imagine this is what it's like when Charon is given an order, just much worse. Like he's being torn apart from the inside by a nauseating feeling of wrongness until the order is done.
> 
> His contract also (in this fic) states that he may be ordered in combat, this means any order not related in some way to combat can be ignored. Azrahkul ordered him to do a lot of horrible things not related to combat, more on that in later chapters.


	5. Gun Practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time Poppy learned how to shoot, even if she is hungover.

           Charon didn't really approve of chems, he didn't really approve of drinking to excess but honestly last night he could have hit her if it weren't for the contract. When she appeared suddenly behind him in nothing but a little silky slip he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from ogling her like any other arsehole in that situation would. He tried not to think about the way the thin fabric ran over her body, just loose enough to dance around her figure and just tight enough to enhance her feminine curves. Never having had a female employer before was a blessing, he wasn't sure what would have happened if one of the despicable human beings he had been owned by had looked like her. Only two night's together and already his long sleeping sex drive was starting to show itself.

           Reminding himself that she was his employer and he had acted like an utter sap earlier when drunk helped him to ignore the dull urges of his body when greeted with a woman in that state of dress. Hell he hadn't spent this much time around any woman in… two hundred and forty years at least. Moira didn't count, besides he had not once been alone with the irritating woman.

____________________

          This morning it was a lot easier to be annoyed at Poppy, he had planned to wake up early and give her a run down on basic gun maintenance before taking her out to shoot. At around half nine he gave up on waiting for her to wake herself and knocked on her door, the warped and uneven wood rattling in it's frame. Such a noise should have woken the dead, he would certainly be on his feet, shotgun in hand, had the roles been reversed. Instead he heard only angry mumbling from the other side of the door. He wrapped his skinless knuckles on it again,

          “WHAT?” Came a shout from the other side, followed by a muted scream, a struggling noise and a thump. Fearing the worst he hastily pushed the door open and pointed the barrel of the gun in the direction of the noise.

          Poppy stood in the centre of the small room, legs parted and fists up in a fighting stance, the thin blanket she had slept in still tangled in her legs like something from a renaissance painting. She was still wearing that goddamn slip, it barely covered her arse, stopping at the top of her thighs and he actually growled at her once he realised she was alone in the room,

          “Sorry Charon, I woke up and forgot where I was… oh ow my head” she clutched at her temples and closed her eyes for long enough for him to have a good look. He was surprised he hadn't noticed a deep scar running from her knee to the top of her thigh, the skin around it warped and twisted and neat little pock marks denoting a bad suture. It had clearly not been given proper medical care for such a serious wound and he wondered why, when all of her other scars showed a great level of care. Honestly he shouldn't even be wondering, she was just his employer and her past or any scars on her body (or equally in her mind) shouldn't matter,

          “I'm going to teach you to shoot” he said gruffly,

          “Oh god no, I'm far too hungover for that” she winced and looked at him pleadingly,

          “You shouldn't have drank so much” he didn't care, she needed to know how to shoot,

          “God Charon, a little compassion please”

          “Just take some med-x, you clearly have no problem with chems”

          “God what is with you Charon, why are you so grumpy this morning?”

          “You have to learn how to handle a gun, unless you plan on exchanging sexual favours for protection”

          “Well since you ask so fucking nicely…”

          “I may not always be around to protect you, I am talking about the future”

          “Why do you even care? Surely if you aren't with me you either have sols your contract to a new employer or  I'll be dead so why would you give a shit what happens to me?”

          “It's my job”

          “Look, Charon I intend to learn all I can about everything from you, just not today… tomorrow?”

          “Do you plan on getting drunk again tonight?”

          “No I don't, I didn't plan on getting drunk last night and it's not like you weren't there drinking with me”

          “Ghouls take more to get drunk than humans, we have a higher tolerance to alcohol and chems”

          “Oh… I didn't know that. So by keeping up with you I was drinking like… twice as much in human equivalent”

          “Possibly more, no one has ever tested it. You did quite well really”

          “Yea well it's not my first rodeo”

          “What?”

          “Sorry it's a saying I picked up… somewhere. Look, fine, I'll take some med-x and do as you wish but will you let me get dressed?” Charon had forgotten, during their back and forth, about her state of undress and her reminder of it made him look at her body again. This time she was relaxed and standing with a hand on one hip which itself was tilted in just a way as to make his mind wander about hips meeting and tilting together. He shook the thought from his head but a soft giggle let him know she had noticed his roving eyes… shit.

____________________

          Head pounding along with her feet on the hard, dusty earth Poppy struggled to keep up with her bodyguard. That morning he had shown her how to disassemble and clean his combat shotgun with a patience she wouldn't have expected from him. He seemed more alive and animated when he talked about guns, she should have guessed as much. After a pause for food and some more med-x while they waited for the midday sun to go down they headed outside of Megaton. Her ghoul bodyguard had insisted that she wear an old jumpsuit of Moira's for this, mumbling something about not surviving five minutes in a dress. She didn't mind really, it was a bit odd to be wearing some other woman's clothes but wasn't that what everything in the wasteland was?

          A small outcropping of rocks in the distance created the curve of a cliff about waist height with a few bottles and rusted cans already set up. In the dip created by the rocks she could see the glinting of sunlight on shattered glass broken in places by the dullness of shredded rust. It was clear this spot had been used for shooting practice many times before,

          “Have you brought people out here before?” She asked the stoic ghoul who tromped along at her side,

          “Yes”

          “Who?”

          “Daniel and Gob… Moira too a few times”

___________________

_The kid had terrible aim, his hand shook when he pointed his gun at an enemy and threw him off considerably. Charon didn't understand it, he had picked up weapon maintenance in moments and by now was a pro at cleaning and repairing weapons. Daniel had explained to him multiple times the physics behind how a gun worked and how to aim even in heavy wind. If understanding were ability the kid would be the best sniper in the Wastes but every time something was in front of him he shook and forgot everything he knew, just spraying bullets around blindly. It was no wonder he had come into Underworld beat up and half dead that first time._

_It was a long shot but Charon thought that maybe target practice might help him. Getting used to aiming and handling a gun without having a target that moved and could attack you at any moment should be useful. Hell even if it did nothing more than up the boy's confidence it would be worth a few afternoons in the baking sun,_

_“Right, aim for these… shit kid not yet,” he threw his hands up to urge the teenager to lower his weapon, he had been setting up some bottles and cans on the waist high, natural wall and the stupid boy had aimed at them while he was still stood there, “never point a gun at something unless you intend to shoot it”_

_“I intended to shoot the cans”_

_“Not with me in front of them you didn't, you pointed a gun at me, did you want to shoot me?”_

_“Well no, not unless you keep being so sarcastic” cheeky little shit,_

_“Fine, aim now” he encouraged once he was stood far away enough to only be hit by a very very stray bullet._

_____________________

          “Right, aim now” he wanted to find out which type of gun she was naturally better with, everyone had a preference and he would start with finding that out. Thankfully his old employer was a pack rat and a hoarder so the house had every type of weapon there was from little concealable pistols to something called a junk canon.

          Upon spotting it in the back of the store room Charon had almost drooled and decided to play about with a Gauss rifle he hadn't known was there. It was leaning against a rock to his side even though there was no chance Poppy could handle something so powerful yet.

          Starting off with a basic 10mm pistol he watched her aim and miss quite spectacularly. She looked over at him, brows furrowed in anger,

          “Probably not the gun for you, give it a few more goes” she did and, after around ten tries managed to knock a can off into the distance, “right maybe the .44 magnum, more powerful and more kick but still a pistol”

          “I like the idea of powerful”

          “Don't get too excited kid” he almost kicked himself for the slip, too much about the situation, even her and the way she was acting made him think of Daniel. Poppy either didn't notice or didn't care, barely glancing at him as he picked the correct gun out of the duffle he had brought with them, “OK, you're a fighter so you should know about rooting yourself, get a good solid stance, that's it… now give it a go”

          “Oh wow” she exclaimed as the gun fired and kicked back enough to throw her arm into the air, that shot came closer than her first with the 10mm though. It only took about seven tries to hit a nuka cola bottle this time, sending it's shattered pieces flying through the air. It took a fair bit of persuading to get her to practice some more with that one but eventually she had cleared the whole shelf of detritus,

          “That may be the one… how about rifles, are you any good at using both hands?”

          “For some things” she said coyly and he got the feeling she wasn't talking about weapons. The idea sent a rush down his spine, he ignored it,

          “we'll try a hunting rifle, powerful but slow” he passed her the gun and showed her the correct stance and how to find the pocket of her shoulder so she didn't hurt herself. It actually surprised him how good she was with it, he watched the red haired scrapper narrow her eyes at her target like it had done something to offend her and pull off a shot. It glaced the edge of the rusted can while Charon tried to fight back laughter at the way she had glared, he looked at her wide eyed for a moment, “looks like you're good with rifles… keep going”

          “OK, wanna make this interesting?” Poppy looked around the rifle rested against her shoulder, her eyes bright and mischievous,

          “How?”

          “Bet you I can clear the cliff top in twenty shots”

          “Everything I own belongs to you remember, it would be a useless bet”

          “It doesn't have to be things, we could bet for favours like doing the washing up or cleaning out the shower or… something”

          “Alright, I'll take that bet” and dammit she did it, in nineteen shots after taking ten attempts just to hit once earlier she had just cleared off seven targets in nineteen shots. Shit she was a good learner. 

          He thought over what came next, a sniper rifle would have to wait until they were somewhere more suited, maybe even until she was used to killing with a gun. He despised lever action rifles, thought them too slow and cumbersome... apart from one, Daniel's favourite, the Lincoln Repeater.

____________________

  _“We need to get the stuff for Hannibal, stop dragging your heels Charon,” he didn't ever want to be back here, under the same roof that he had spent almost fifty years with that prick Azrahkul. Still he would do anything for the kid he was growing real affection for, like he had any choice in the matter. But here, in the museum of history he struggled at not letting bad memories swamp him even though he had known he would end up back here at some point,_

_“Oh wow come look!” The bright voice of his employer rang out across the room and he almost rolled his eyes at the infectious optimism. Good thing they had already killed all the ferals or the kids voice would bring them running in seconds,_

_“What is it kid?” The teen was bent over a surprisingly intact display case, bobby pin and screwdriver already in hand ready to pick the lock,_

_“Look at this gun!” The excitement in his voice was almost palpable, the kid was close to jumping about in glee,_

_“That's a nice gun” and it was, the condition of the thing was nearly perfect, it's long black barrel almost gleaming and the rich wood of the stock like new. With a little care from the boy the thing could be truly beautiful, a good clean and some gun oil would make it shine and most importantly leave it's long unused parts working like it was fresh from the factory. The most striking thing was the intricately carved gold of the body, it must have taken weeks for someone to carve such complicated patterns,_

_“It actually belonged to Lincoln, can you believe this thing's four hundred years old?”_

_“It has been well cared for, you should continue to care for it”_

_“I think Hannibal might want it”_

_“That doesn't mean you have to give it to him. Let's find this poster and leave” the kid scooped up a few more things as they walked about the museum, all of which he would sell to Hannibal Hamlin, the leader of a group of ex slaves determined to help others. It was a noble cause, but stupid, with the slavers at Paradise Falls going unchallenged for decades it would be like swimming up stream._

______________________

          Thinking about it, the Lincoln Repeater was amongst some other items Charon hadn't found when they returned to Megaton. Other things where the gnomes the kid had been fascinated with and the bobbleheads he had collected. They were all things of little worth, other than the repeater and he started to get a little suspicious when he thought about it. With Poppy's permission he would have to ask Simms about it, the new Simms that was not his father and he still imagined him as a little boy chasing after a dog.  
His current employer was struggling with a shotgun, it was loaded with buckshot, the easiest to fire and least effective. It would pepper a target with small pellets and slow most attackers but was little use against more than a radroach if you wanted to kill something with more than a handful of shots, it would just make a supermutant angry,

          “Not the gun for you” he said taking it from her when she looked at him defeated,

          “Maybe if I wasn't so tired…”

          “We can stop for the night”

          “Oh god yes please, my arms are aching and I've got strong arms”

          “I would like your permission to speak with Sheriff Simms”

          “You don't need my permission, you could just say ‘I'm going to go talk to sheriff Simms’ and I'd say ‘OK see you later’. How come? And I'm asking out of curiosity, not as a condition of letting you go… don't worry you already have permission to do as you like”

          “I would rather not say”

          “Perfectly fine, part of being your own man is having secrets… though I am pretty nosey and not knowing will drive me mad” he nodded and remained silent, rather enjoying being allowed to keep something to himself. He had always had secrets, even with the worst employer he had things he kept to himself but that was usually because they didn't know or care. Here was an employer who really wanted to know but left him to his own thoughts and feelings because he… deserved it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. Nothing all that exciting is happening yet... But it will, it really will. Right now I'm enjoying playing around with the characters, giving some emotions and self loathing to Charon... Poor guy.


	6. Family Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chance to practice with a sniper rifle turns into an encounter with an unexpected person.

          It had been a long week of barely talking to her stoic companion outside of gun practice but now Poppy felt confident with her hunting rifle. She had tried out a few others, Charon had grumbled when she had too much fun with automatic weapons, saying something about lacking self control. She didn't really like laser weapons, there was something a lot less satisfying about burning a target rather than putting a hole in it. Plasma weapons had been fun, turning anything into a pile of goo was always going to be enjoyable but she hadn't been anywhere near as good with them as with the hunting rifle.

          Charon had been playing around with his new toy, it was the only way she could describe it when he looked like a kid at Christmas whenever he was near it. Well maybe a grumpy, unemotional kid at Christmas but pretty damn happy, for Charon. The Gauss Rifle was his most prised possession now, his poor loyal shotgun set aside while he scanned the horizon with the Gauss. A single shot went off at her side while she aimed at a can which was what she considered a great distance away and was proud to be able to hit that far. Her ghoul disappeared into the distance and she jumped up to follow him and found, far away enough that she hadn't even known it was there, a dead mole rat,

          “Shit and I thought I was good at distances”

          “You live as long as I have and you might be this good. Speaking of which I think it's time you used that thing to actually kill something”

          “Really?” She couldn't help but give a little excited jump which made the ghoul roll his eyes,

          “Yes and if you manage that I might let you try a sniper rifle”

          “Do you think I'll be good with one?”

          “Surprisingly so, you seem to be a natural shot you just have to get used to scopes”

           “Will you tell me why you talked to Sheriff Simms?” She asked him this occasionally, he always said the same thing but the subtle glow of pride in his eyes kept her asking. She had the sneaking suspicion he was glad she asked because it gave him a chance to say no,

          “No”

          “OK” she said brightly, she couldn't tell if he knew what she was doing or not, “will you help me find out about my parents?”

          “What?” He was clearly taken aback and honestly so was she, up until then she hadn't been aware of any need to find out about them. In fact the idea was barely formed in her mind now but the urge burned bright like a spark in a dark room, all consuming and welcoming,

          “Well I don't know anything about them really… not even their names and I guess if we… I don't know… find the farm I might be able to learn some things about them”

          “I didn't know you wanted to”

          “Neither did I until just now, I guess I missed them without even knowing what I was missing. I don't know why but now that I think about it the idea of one day knowing who they were… it's sorta filling a hole in me, one I didn't even know was there”

          “Very philosophical” he said it sarcastically but a slight turn up at the corner of his mouth told her he was happy for her, or he had gas,

          “So will you help me?”

          “I have no choice”

          “Oh fuck the contract, if you don't want to come I can always order you to stay here, or order you to go somewhere else… where do you want to go?”

          “It would be nice to return to Underworld some day, but I will help you find your parents story first”

          “What's Underworld?”

          “A city of ghouls, I lived there for fifty years”

          “Were you free there”

          “No”

          “Oh… who was your employer”

          “Azrahkul”

          “What was he… or she like”

          “He and I hope you never have to know what he was like”

_____________________

         She was doing well at sniping out the mole rats, it seemed distance was something she did well, surprising for a bare knuckle fighter. The hunting rifle laid at her side, ready to be grabbed at a moment's notice should she need a gun she was used to but chances are she wouldn't need it.

          The next test was people and he knew exactly where to find some, somehow the old school building near Megaton never had a shortage of raiders. Even back when he ran with the Lone Wanderer they would clear them out, leaving the ground smeared with the blood and entrails of the broken and bruised bodies and not long after more would move in. There was never any solid clue as to why a broken down school building full of rotten carcasses was such hot property to the raider community, but it was. Charon suspected it was to do with the proximity to a successful and growing town.  
In fact he had been surprised at first to see the walls so much further out than they were before and new shacks propped up around the edge like mushrooms after the rain. Now they had been there two weeks he knew why.

          Before he died quite a few years ago Walter, the man who ran the water treatment plant, had figured out a way to get the radiation free river water up to the town. The old man had even worked out a way to filter it of all the other nasties. After his death the blueprints for these two systems had been found and work began. Not only did the promise of truly clean water on tap bring people flocking but so did the jobs available on building it and all the new homes. Charon learned all this when he had visited Simms, after he had found out that the house hadn't been opened since Daniel's death and no one had been acting suspiciously about the place at all. Given that and the fact that nothing was destroyed and only specific things taken meant it was unlikely to have been a burglary. This made Charon less nervous for their safety now but more worried about what it could actually have been,

           “Whatcha thinking?” Poppy asked dragging him forcefully out of his reverie with an almost child-like look of curiosity on her face, he hated that look, it usually came with questions,

          “Nothing” he said, he hadn't realised that they were almost at the school now and he had been deep in thought while walking through the wasteland… fuck. It was a good job Poppy had got the hang of the gun slung over one shoulder, he wouldn't have noticed something sneaking up at all. He gestured for her to crouch down behind the short, scabby wall of a completely destroyed house and once she was in place he joined her,

          “You want to set up the gun first, lean it against the wall” she did so without question and he nodded, “now, take a look around the building through the scope, see if you can see raiders around the outside and spot any you can see through windows. Once you let off a shot it'll only be a matter of time before they figure out where you are so have a spot to move to picked out already”

          “Up there?” She gestured at the open side of a two story house, most of the building had been blown off and laid around it in crumbled heaps but a single window was left on the second floor and a broken set of stairs led up there,

          “Good spot” she was already doing as he had told her, scanning around the building through her scope, “how many do you see?”

          “I can see three on the outside, two through windows and one through the big hole in the side… shit… oh god… shit” she looked like she was about to go into shock or something, her face washed of all colour and her hand shaking against the butt of the gun, “no no no… he… he can't be alive”

          “What, who is it?” He grabbed the gun and looked through the scope to see what she was looking at. All he saw was a raider, maybe strange for how old he was in a ‘profession’ that meant you encounter death regularly. That and the shaggy wolf hide wrapped around his shoulders almost dwarfing his gray head, what appeared to have once been a cape hanging in stringy tendrils around the normal raider leathers,

          “He can't be” Poppy violently snatched the gun from him and peered through the scope again, he could almost feel the desperation radiating off her in waves, “that's Scar”

          “What?”

          “The raider that… that took me… that killed my parents and sold me… that cared for me and taught me how to fight”

          “What do you want to do?”

          “I don't know if I should kill him or thank him...god this is so confusing”

          “I think you should ask him some questions”

          “What?”

          “You want to find your parents farm, what better chance than asking him”

          “Good point… I… I don't know what to say though, how to ask”

          “Probably not politely”

          “Do we fight our way in there?”

          “Could you beat him if it came to it? Subdue him without killing him?”

          “Probably yea, he taught me a lot and I've learned a fair few things since then… yea I think I can”

          “I'll take care of the others, you worry about him”

          “You sure?”

          “Yes. Here's the plan, we go in together, shoot our way to him, I take out any other raiders in the room and any who want to get in while you fight him… I can disarm him with a shot if I need to”

          “He tends to fight with a knife, he prefers something ‘up close and personal’ as he puts it. Besides he's always surrounded by plenty of people with guns”

          “I can get the knife off him”

          “So can I, I've parted many a man with his pig sticker in more ways than one” he narrowed his eyes at her smirking face,

          “Are you hinting that you've… cut men's penises off?”

          “Yup, some right bastards in the fighting pit in the past. One guy decided he'd try and give the crowd a different short of show, had the top ripped off me and his hands reaching for my shorts with me pinned to the ground before I overpowered him. I made him suck his own dick after I cut it off” the images whirling around in his head at that gave him a flurried and confusing mix of emotions, from aroused through pure rage right up to pride,

            “This isn't helping”

           “No it's not”

          “Come on”

____________________

          Heavy footsteps thudded against the stairs in time with the beating in her ears as she could hear her heart. Her mind swam with images of dead raiders, the glassy eyes of one girl, probably only eighteen gazing out lifelessly while her forehead was nothing more than a gaping hole spilling out her brain. Another image of an older woman's arm blown off by Charon's shotgun and the fear in her eyes as she convulsed, the bloody stump shaking with the force of the vibrations of her body before Poppy finished her off with a shot to the temple. A man kneeling by a dead friend, scooping up his organs and trying to stuff them back in through a great hole in his gut left by a frag grenade, he was shot through the head, his lifeless face landing in his friends curling entrails.

          Poppy had to fight back tears as she ran up the stairs, she had thought herself used to death and violence but never like this. Back in the pit she had bashed in skulls and broken bones with her bare fists but this… this was carnage. A familiar voice greeted her when she reached the top of the rickety staircase,

          “Who the hell…?” It was an angry shout right up until she rounded the door, then he let out a barely stifled gasp. He was stood alone in a room and she had never imagined the big strong man of her childhood could be so old. Under the flashy rag of a cape he had always worn she could see his body was frail and skinny, the leathers he wore hanging off him. His face hadn't changed but for a deepening of wrinkles and a greying of hair, it still held bright sparkling eyes, too intelligent for a raider and the great scar that gave him his name running across from his right hairline to the left of his chin,

          “My little flower? What… why are you here?” His voice dripped with an almost honest concern and Poppy felt like she was a child again, crying after a hard day of training,

          “Scar…” she breathed out almost lovingly under her breath, he opened his arms inviting her into an embrace. She almost went to him too, but a big ghoulish hand on her arm stopped her and she looked into the worried face of her bodyguard. This was the first time she had seen a real emotion on his face without him acting to school it into his usual stoic look, “I have questions for you and you're going to answer them”

           “Of course, are the others dead?” the pair exchanged shocked glances at his answer, she had expected a fight, not this,

          “Those that aren't will be soon” Charon answered for her, she shuddered to think of the mangled bodies left in their wake,

          “Good good… come little flower, sit, I'll tell you everything you need to know” she looked at Charon who shook his head, concern for her painted clearly on his face. She ignored him and walked towards the flimsy wooden chair Scar was motioning to,

          “You try anything old man” Charon warned with a growl before turning his attention back to the door. Poppy wasn't stupid though, she intended to keep her rifle on her lap the whole time,

          “Where am I from, I want to find my… home”

          “I can show you on a map as soon as we are done with the questions” she nodded, accepting this answer, she would get what she had come for at least. The old man sat creakily on a chair by her side and motioned for her to continue,

          “Why did you train me to fight?”

          “Oh that one's a long story… I wasn't always a raider you know, in fact I was very much like you once. I too was kidnapped but I was older, about ten. Oh I was an angry kid too, when I killed two of the raiders who took me the others decided I was vicious enough to be one of them. It's very freeing you know, as a boy of ten to be told you can do what you want, kill who you want, eat and sleep when you want. I did some terrible, terrible things before I found you, done some awful things since.

          “We were hungry, that's why we attacked your farm, your little family had more than enough food and we wanted it. All of us were happy to just take and I enjoyed killing, if I have to be honest I laughed at what I did to your mother and father for a long time. But that night when you looked at me, so scared with such big eyes you seemed so sweet and, well a little like me when I was first taken. The plan had been to sell you to Paradise Falls then but I knew just what kind of life you would have if we did and I… felt bad about it. That's why, that's The truth of it, getting to my age there’s a lot to look back on and regret but I don’t regret that”

          “Then why did you sell me in the end?”

          “I heard talk from some of my gang, you had grown up too pretty and by God you still are. They wanted to have you, by force if necessary. They had planned…” he paused and sighed as though trying to get up the courage to go on, “they had planned to rape you, to leave you beaten and bloody then sell you on themselves. I taught you how to fight so you would have a… trade if you will, so you wouldn't end up a whore like so many other women sold into slavery. I knew if you turned up at Paradise Falls used up, bleeding and bruised like they intended you would never be anything but.

          “I think those men held some bitterness towards me and wanted it to be some sort of punishment for the girl they saw as my golden child. I'm sorry, I really am”

          “How many other women did you damn to that life?” She could feel the bile rising with her words, he was a hypocrite if he thought she should thank him for sparing her while he damned others,

          “I do not claim to be a saint, I don't even claim to be a good man, I have sold hundreds of women into slavery, raped many more but… if I can go to my end having done one good thing it will have been doing my best for you”

          “I can't even start to imagine the life I could have had, growing up happy on a farm with loving parents if it wasn't for you. I’m confused, you've twisted my mind so I don't know how I should feel anymore” she was crying now, letting the tears fall unheeded down her face,

          “I don't expect you to forgive me but I know I did my best. I deserve your hate for what I did to your parents and countless others, but I feel no guilt about how I raised you my little flower, I really did care about you and I only wish I realised that before I ripped that life away from you”

          “Did you rape my mother?” she hadn't expected that question to rear it's ugly head in her mind, hadn't wanted to know for sure but now it was out in the open,

          “Yes, I am not ashamed to own up to that and many other things”

          “Can I just get the coordinates and go… I have no more questions”

          “Of course” the old man stood with difficulty and shuffled to a table that held and old map, probably pre war with scribbles all over it showing places and settlements that were formed post war. He pointed to an empty part of the map and Charon looked over her shoulder, nodding once to indicate that he had memorised it. Poppy was hurt by one thing the most, it was an empty space, her home, the place she could have had a happy life was not even important enough to these people to be marked on the map.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted Scar to come across as a sorta wise old man, he's done horrible things in his life but he's brave enough to admit to them. Not exactly likeable, but... Understandable.


	7. A Date?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon has to deal with feelings, like feeling useless when his employer cries, or feeling jealous when she flirts, or feeling aroused when she so much as mentions anything even slightly to do with sex.

          Charon watched as his Mistress crumpled on the sofa in their house in Megaton and fell apart. Tears were streaming down her face and her breath was coming out in heart wracking sobs. Despite knowing she had every right to be crying right now it made him angry. He was angry because she hadn't told him what to do or to go outside or anything, just let him stand there and watch like he had been forgotten. Angry because it was his fault, he shouldn't have taken her to the school and started the whole series of unfortunate events. Most of all he was angry because he didn't know what to do, his employer was distressed and there was nothing he could shoot or intimidate to make it stop,

          “Mistress” he said timidly, taking a single step towards the woman shaking on the couch,

          “Don't call me that” she snapped at him between sobs,

          “Poppy” he guessed at what she would want to be referred to as, it was the first time he had used her name since that first night and it tasted wrong for the fireball that he had come to know,

          “Yes?” She didn't look at him, just went on wailing into knees that were pulled up in front of her face,

          “Are you alright?” It was the stupidest question in the world, of course she wasn't alright no one would be after just confronting the man who had killed their parents and then done all he could to keep them safe. He asked it anyway because he couldn't think of anything else and for once in his life he felt the need to talk,

          “Noooooo” she wailed, an ugly noise he never wanted to hear from her again, not least because it meant she was unhappy. Though why would he care if she was unhappy, ‘services in combat’ and all that ‘nobody's errand boy’ and all the rest. He had never cared about the happiness of any other employer… except one.

____________________

_The kid tried to stifle his tears while they were surrounded by Brotherhood soldiers. Charon did not feel comfortable there and was glad that his employer was not crying, that would draw too much attention by far. But the kid had just lost his dad, the same dad he had searched for for nearing a year with Charon at his side for most of it. He wanted to comfort him but didn't know how so he settled for standing statue like at his side while the kid slumped over the table in the dining hall._

_Despite his glaring at her Sarah Lyons approached, she was the Brotherhood golden girl, daughter of the elder and head of an elite team at only twenty three. A lot can be said of nepotism,_

_“You know you can eat in the Lyon's den Daniel” Charon's lip curled and he had to suppress a growl at the woman using his employer's name, even if the suggestion had been both sensible and kind, “it might not be completely deserted but it will be a lot more private than this… maybe better if you don't feel up to so many people yet”_

_The next week they ate in the Lyon's den, getting to know the group quite well and forcing Charon to, begrudgingly, change his opinion of them. After a week they left._

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          Once she had cried out all of her tears Poppy was left with a sense of urgency. She wanted to get going, to set off on her great quest and she told Charon the same,

          “I want to go… now”

          “A trip like this requires planning and right now it is nearly night,”

          “What would you recommend then?” He raised a brow at her and she wasn't sure why, perhaps he wasn't used to being asked his opinion,

          “We should eat and talk it over. Tomorrow we will buy the supplies we need” so they did, they planned a route to the farm, it was in a spot just across the river from a place called five axles rest stop. The journey would take them through a few places Charon warned her about, along with a place called Big Town which to his memory was a settlement. Poppy felt hopeful, now that she had cried out all the sadness from her encounter with Scar she was looking forward to knowing where she had come from.

____________________

          Once his employer had settled for the night Charon returned to the old school with a straightforward idea. He broke into the room where the old man seemed to be waiting. It was as though he knew what was coming. This ragged old being, frail and surprisingly wise was nothing like the feared raider he had once been and Charon hesitated for a second before he opened a hole in his chest with a careful shot. As the frail man bled to death on the floor he looked up at Charon and whispered two words, “thank you”.

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          The shop in Megaton, called Craterside Supplies was as dark and dingy as he had remembered it. Only now it was run by a scabby young man who couldn't have been far past his teens if the left over acne was any indication. He jumped at the sight of Charon, though the ghoul was hardly surprised and simply glared at him,

          “So you own this place?” Poppy spoke from his side and the shopkeeper's eyes went wide. Today his employer was wearing a green dress with sleeves that went to the elbow and buttons down the front. When he had first seen her in it he had been speechless as she so often made him (it was getting annoying) the way it glanced off her curves was enticing and he had to remind himself that she was his employer… again. He had to hold back a growl when she undid the first two buttons before entering the shop, probably to get a better deal. Charon knew exactly what the boy behind the counter was thinking and it gave him an unwelcome tinge of jealousy,

          “My mother does… but I will eventually” the boy seemed desperate to cement his place as a suitable prospect for his employer. Like the idea of one day owning a run down shop in a settlement made of shacks would make him good enough for her. In Charon's opinion no one was good enough for her,

           “Oh OK… I need some things” she stalked around the shop, looking at items, picking up weapons and feeling the weight of them in her hands. All the while the youngster followed at her heels like a puppy, “what's your name anyway?”

          “Em… Billy… Billy Creel” Charon narrowed his eyes, he knew that name but couldn't remember where from,

          “Nice to meet you Billy” Poppy said, all politeness (until someone made her mad). Then Charon remembered, Billy Creel was a guy who had lived in Megaton all those years ago, he'd lived with some little foundling girl,

          “Your mother isn't Moira is she?” He spoke up to the love (or at least lust) struck boy that was following his Mistress around,

          “Oh no, she left long before I was born, I think she went off to write a book about farming in the wastes or so my mum tells me. No my mum's Maggie, Maggie Creel” the ghoul just grunted and nodded his acknowledgment, the security guard by the door shifted as though the noncommittal grunt was seen as a threat. Of course Charon had spotted him as soon as they entered the shop but until now had paid no attention, with this small movement he became worth the bodyguard's time. Turning his head away from the woman and her new admirer he glared pointedly at the well armed (though not as well as him) man in the corner. The security guard looked him up and down through narrowed eyes, then with the barest movement nodded his head as if to say ‘carry on’ Charon counted this as a win since he'd clearly intimidated the guy. To his disappointment Poppy hadn't even noticed the small exchange,

          “I think I'll get this” she said, holding up an impressive looking sniper rifle, quite a lot of gun to handle for someone who had barely ever fired one. Then again this multifaceted woman was always surprising him and she did learn quick, maybe it would work out for her, “oh and all the ammo you have for it and a hunting rifle and shotgun… oh and any food you have that's easy to transport”

          “Frag’s” he grunted in her direction causing the security guard to move in his peripheral vision again but he had already decided the guy was not a great threat to his charge, so ignored him,

          “Oh yes, thanks Charon and frag mines and grenades” she said, smiling over her shoulder at him and making him feel inordinately proud when he had simply reminded her of something. Billy moved slowly and it wasn't clear if this was because he was bad at his job or just didn't want the object of his new infatuation to leave.

          Eventually everything was put together and she handed over the store of caps they had made from selling meat and other scavenged items on their practice outings along with some from the safe at the house. The boy looked sad and… nervous, he was about to do something stupid, Charon could feel it on the air,

           “Em… miss, I didn't ask your name” he said, starting off easy obviously and the ghoul wasn't sure if this was working up the courage to ask for a date or to go round the back for a quickie. Knowing the wasteland it was the second option,

           “It's Poppy” she smiled at him, actually smiled a genuine smile at this little shit. Charon could feel jealous anger bubble in his chest, it wasn't like he wanted her for himself, no she was his employer and he was… this. He did want her to have the best though and a quick fumble with this spotty teen was not it. At least that's what he told himself,

          “Well… em… Poppy, I wondered if you would maybe like to get some drinks with me sometime” the boy actually surprised him by being a bit of a gentleman and asking for a date. It didn't change the ghouls opinion of him that much though,

          “That's a really nice offer but we're leaving town tomorrow and I don't know when we'll be back”

          “Maybe when you do get back?”

          “Maybe… don't wait up” she grinned at him, was she flirting? He couldn't believe this was happening again.

____________________

_Moira brown was annoying and not in a easy to ignore her and move on way but in a constantly chirpy and in your face way. The kid seemed to know her and even though she was at least five years his senior he was making puppy dog eyes at her. Charon rolled his own eyes, it had been hundreds of years since a woman peaked his interest like that. Oh yea he'd had sex, mostly with ghoul girls when Azrahkul had taken pity on him and persuaded them to do it… he hadn't liked it but his body always reacted. Then there had been the slave girls that his sick employer occasionally bought or ‘borrowed’. Usually skinny little smoothskins whose eyes were empty, like they'd given up on this world and gone somewhere else in their minds. He'd hated it but sometimes that despicable rat had ordered him to have a go on them when he was done. After that he would sell the poor girls on to whatever fate had in store for them._

_The whole process made Charon's skin crawl but Azrahkul had managed to add a new layer to his brainwashing without even realising it. When Charon had refused to do what he wanted, something he could do thanks to the clause in his contract about combat situations, the sick bartender had come up with ingenious ways to torture him. Unfortunately because they were always in some way violent he couldn't ignore them and had been made to do things like roll in broken glass and stand naked in a corner until his knees gave out. The pain, humiliation and the memories associated with his original training meant the narcissistic ghoul had added that to his brainwashing._

_The ghoul bodyguard didn't want to think about that now, when he watched the kid dealing with this woman. He could see something pure and innocent in his eyes, there was lust yes, but it wasn't connected to some conceited wish to have any woman he met but… something deeper,_

_“I think I might he in Love Charon” the kid said after they left the shop, of course that's what it was, that little four letter word the cynical, grizzled ghoul didn't even believe in. The world was too messed up for something as delicate as love to exist. He just rolled his eyes and grunted in the affirmative, the kid didn't really expect him to talk anyway_.

____________________

           “Don't think I've ever been that uncomfortable” Poppy blurted out when they were far away enough from the shop that no one would hear. Charon raised a brow muscle at her, wondering what she could mean, “I've never been asked out on a date before, usually guys just… well they'd just grab me somewhere and make a lewd comment or something. If I wasn't interested I'd beat the snot out of them, if I was I'd let them know with an equally lewd comment. Just so you know it was rare that I was interested”

           “Do you intend to go?”

           “What? Oh on a date with that kid? Hell no, I'd snap him in half if he ever got near my pants. I like my men manly and rough not… sweet. It was hard to say no though, not too sure I'm cut out for polite society”

           Charon was shocked, this was the first time she had spoken of any kind of sexual inclination and the very word ‘rough’ filled his head with images he'd rather not be there. The most prevalent one being holding her down against a rickety table, a hand leaving bruises around her neck as it squashed the air from her and the table creaked with each powerful thrust. She would be gasping for breath and pushing out desperate moans and trying to mutter something between choked groans as he used her body for his sick pleasure.

            Fuck, he didn't know how long he had zoned out for but they were back at the house, stood in front of the door while Poppy searched in her bag for the key. He was hard in a way he hadn't been for over a hundred years, the idea of a gorgeous smoothskin actually wanting something like that… well he was glad he was wearing his leathers since they seemed to hide it quite well. Her arse was in the air while she bent over searching through the bag she had dropped on the floor and he wondered if she had managed to find any underwear. The thought made his ‘situation’ worse.

          When Poppy had told him, casually and innocently, that she had to find some underwear or somewhere she could buy some he had only given it a moment's thought. It was simply a fact then, she wasn't wearing underwear and he hadn't allowed his mind to dwell on it. Now though his legendary control had slipped just enough to let that little nugget of information pop back into his head at the worst possible time.  
Finally she got the door open and passed through it into the living room, Charon followed trying his hardest not to walk funny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like the interactions I find in a lot of fics between Charon and other bodyguard's or bouncers, it's always funny to see this kind of unspoken security language. I wanted to give my own go at that, poor Charon did well but it wasn't exactly noticed.


	8. It Happened In Bigtown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy surprises herself and Charon with her abilities and a dream turns a bit too real.

          They set off just as the morning light was touching the tips of the mountains in the distance. As usual Poppy hadn't found sleep easily last night, especially having a ridiculously early night like Charon had insisted. Now it was daytime, she was awake and she was regretting taking a much larger dose of jet than she usually would allow herself. Though she wasn't sure if she would have regretted not sleeping more.

          The bag on her back was heavy with provisions and ammo, enough to get them all the way there. It would take around two nights to make it from Megaton to the far corner of the wasteland where she would get her answers. Their first stop was Big Town, half a day's walk away and a good place to rest and take stock for a few hours. She also got the impression that Charon just wanted to see the place even if he would never tell her that.

          Reminding herself of the surly attitude of her traveling companion she pushed all ideas of whining about the early start or the weight of her bag to the back of her mind. It would only start them off in a bad note,

          “Right then” she said, sounding far more chipper and determined than she actually felt,

          “Right” was all he said in reply. This was going to be a long and most likely silent journey.

____________________

          “Will you tell me about Azrahkul? I like a good bit of gore and it'll help make the time pass” his boss asked and was met with an irritated growl, he couldn't bring himself to tell her about all the sick things the worst of his past employers had done. He definitely couldn't tell her about what the disgusting rat had made him do, for some reason he cared what she thought about him. With a sigh he decided to stick to the facts, if only to shut her up,

          “He ran a bar in Underworld” when he didn't speak up again (because, quite frankly he didn't want to) she started questioning him more,

          “That's it? That's all you're going to tell me?”

          "No"

          "Talking about these things can help"

          "No"

          "Please"

          “Fine, you want more? He was a chem pusher, a rapist and a slave trader. The monster would do anything to get his dick wet or make caps” why did she want to talk about a this? It just made him angry, if that was how she wanted to pass the time she could have simply kept talking his ear off and not asked questions,

          “So he made you do horrible things…” it was a statement, not a question and Charon just grunted a reply while kicking a rock across the dusty landscape and picturing it as Azrahkul’s head… or Poppy's, “Mr Jefferies, that's the guy you killed, my owner… he made me do horrible things. Once he made me kill a puppy to get it's wild dog mother riled up before a fight, she really went for me”

          “Oh” it was all he could say, now he knew why she wanted to talk about Azrahkul and his heart dropped into his stomach with guilt. She just wanted to talk about their shared experiences, the things they had both gone through at the hands of evil masters,  
“He was a greedy man, probably not truly evil but so very selfish. I wasn't a whore, not officially but every once in awhile someone would make a very generous offer for some… time with me” had she really just told him that? The blood coursing through his veins almost boiled in anger at the thought of this greasy man allowing men to… to… rape her, “he usually said yes if the offer was good enough and they agreed to keep quiet about it… for some reason he didn't want it known that he would rent out his girls”

          Charon sighed, a deep rattling sound in his ravaged airways, “I'm sorry… Azrahkul would… sometimes when he had access to a slave girl he would order me to… take out my frustration…” he couldn't finish the thought, couldn't comfortably admit to what he had done and he didn't want to see the disappointment in her eyes,

          “But I thought you couldn't be ordered to do anything not combat related?” He hadn't expected that, thinking she'd react with hate or disgust at the hint of just part what he had done back then. When he finally looked over she was staring at him with a mix of confusion and sympathy. Not pity, he couldn't stand to see pity in those eyes, but a real understanding empathy,

          “Azrahkul would come up with ingenious ways to punish me if I said no, eventually it became another aspect of my contract and I felt the need to follow any order he gave me”

          “But not any more?”

          “No, without being punished and the near constant reinforcement that compulsion faded” he glanced at her and she looked deep in thought, after a few moments blessed silence she seemed to make up her mind about something but didn't tell him what,

          “Wanna talk about it?”

          “No”

          “Let's talk about something happier” as she faced him, managing somehow to walk backwards without tripping he spotted her eyes widen then narrow into a look of pure hate. The girl was looking at a point just over his shoulder, he felt a tingling on the back of his neck that told him the hairs there would be standing up, if he had any. Too busy wallowing in self pity and guilt he had been distracted enough to allow something to sneak up behind them,

          “What is that?” Poppy whispered as though she were able to hide from it by just being quiet. A little swelling of pride got the chance to form when he saw her pulling the rifle from her shoulder, something he had taught her to do the second she felt threatened. He turned around slowly, catching the curious gaze of a huge misshapen bear like creature, what little still existed of it's hair grew in messy tufts around the mass of tough leathery skin marred with the scars from irradiated boils. The Yao-guai was eyeing them up, deciding if they were worth the trouble of charging, it would undoubtedly decide they were sooner or later,

          “That is a Yao-guai” he whispered to Poppy, holding one arm out in front of her while he reached for his shotgun with the other hand, “make slow and steady movements, we want to make ourselves look as big as possible and hope it thinks we're too much trouble to attack”

          “OK” she breathed from behind him and he could sense her pulling herself to her full height and holding out one of her arms like he was, the other clasped securely around her hunting rifle,

          “You see those rocks over there?” She looked and breathed a yes to him, “when it charges I want you to run as fast as possible over there, I'll keep it distracted and if it manages to kill me I want you to remain calm and finish it off… do you hear me?”

          “No Charon, I have to help I can't let you just do this alone”

          “OK if you have to help take shots from behind those rocks but do not come out until AFTER either I am dead or it is”

          “OK” she said, managing to make her soft whisper sound perturbed. And then it charged.

____________________

          The great hulking animal raised up on it's back legs to stand at at least nine foot tall and let out an almighty roar. Before it was even able to land back on all fours and start running Charon had pushed Poppy in the direction of the rocks and taken his shotgun in both hands. She darted for cover like he had told her and had to stifle a scream when a huge, sharp clawed paw came crashing down into his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Taking pot shots from her spot was doing nothing and Charon was only weakening it when he aimed at it's chest and shoulders, it's head moving too fast to get a good shot in.

           Poppy came to a conclusion, though she had never fired it had had barely practiced with any other sniper rifle the powerful gun she had bought from Craterside Supplies was sticking partway out of her bag. It was called the Victory Rifle, apparently it was a custom in the wastes to name especially strong or especially well loved guns and this one was special indeed.  Charon had explained the concept of sniping, she understood how and had taken her time getting used to the scope but had only tried it on slow moving, unaware molerats. Despite this she felt nerves building as she reaches for it, she knew it wasn't ideal to use a gun for the first time in a life of death fight but she had to try.

Laying the gun against the rocks she peered through the scope, by now Charon was fighting with his combat knife, slashing at the thing as he circled it and it darted towards him making swipes with it's paw. Poppy waited until he had it in the right position, lined up her shot and attempted to center her mind in this moment, no distractions, just her and the gun.

          Deep breath in, hold it, breathe out and pull the trigger. The huge, powerful gun clattered in her grip as she pulled off the shot, knocking the breath from her lungs in a woosh. It took her some time to catch her breath and stop shaking from the strong, energetic burst of movement. When she did feel more grounded and human she looked up to see a confused Charon looking over the carcass of a Yao-guai as though it had just grown wings. An angry glance at her confirmed that he didn't believe for a second she actually made that shot. Neither did she and in fact she looked around the arid landscape half expecting another shooter to be stood somewhere with a smoking gun.

____________________

          He scanned over the landscape to find who had made the shot but there was only Poppy, him and the dead beast as far as the eye could see and she was shaking and gasping for breath. Sidling over cautiously, just in case the thing was not quite dead he inspected the wound, a perfectly round hole right through the Yao-guai’s temple. It was a shot he would have been proud to make from that distance, it was a long way to where his employer was crouched. Another cursory glance around the horizon told him the same as the first, she had to have been responsible.

          Their eyes met and he noted the confused look on her face to match the one he was surely wearing, she looked around her too and he had to stifle a laugh. On shaky legs his employer stood, dusting off the dry mud from her well worn leathers and combat armour (it had all been in her room and he had insisted she wear it even if it had been meant for Moira, the eccentric shopkeeper was most likely dead) and took a few steps towards him. He was glad to see she had her hunting rifle grasped in her hands even if she had left her pack behind. A considerable time and many shaky steps and she had found her feet again and was striding towards him,

          “I… em… did I do that?” She looked down at the sagging body of the dead beast, careful not to step in the spreading pool of blood,

          “I don't see anyone else who could have” he really did find it hard to believe himself, “are you sure you didn't know how to use a gun before I taught you?”

          “Well I'd fired pistols a few times but as you saw I'm not exactly great with them and Scar said I should learn how to fight with my wit's before I used a tool… oh wait Charon, did it hit you? Are you alright?”

           “I'm fine” he lifted his hand to the scratch marks down his sturdy leather armour, they hadn't even broken through, “that Scar, he was a smart man, for a raider” he couldn't think of anything else to say, he knew a certain proficiency with weapons could be passed down in the blood, often those with great skills would have children with a natural ability that simply needed honing but… from what he knew her mother and father were both farmers, someone THAT good with weapons wouldn't likely have spent their life on a farm. The other possibility was that she had been taught and was simply lying to him. They may not have been together for a month yet but he trusted her enough to know she wouldn't lie to him about something like this. It must have just been a lucky shot.

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          Big Town had changed… a lot, where it had once been not much more than a few squat houses next to the remnants of a trash heap it was now a thriving little community. The open space to the left of the houses had been littered with debris of old wood, metal and crushed robots. The rubbish had been cleared and used to build a serviceable wall and the empty space held crops and even a little lawn with actual grass. Now that the moat around the town ran with clean water the place had found itself sitting on useful, fertile ground. It was almost pretty and as close as possible to the opposite of how Daniel and Charon had found it so many years ago.

____________________

_No matter how many times Charon grumbled about it the kid always took time out from his personal quest to help anyone who asked for it. Daniel was a sap, his bodyguard told him repeatedly that he would help far more people if he brought clean water to the wastes,_

_“That won't help this poor kid if he's dead out there” the irony of his employer calling someone else kid when he was barely older than him (and kid was Daniel’s unofficial nickname) wasn't lost on the ghoul,_

_“Fine” he grunted and they followed behind a sixteen year old boy as he lead them towards Big Town. Little Lamplight was safe as can be hidden away in it's caverns but on their sixteenth birthday the children were turfed out and sent to Big Town, a place they were told was heaven on earth. It was not._

_During the journey there they had only been set upon by a few molerats and radscorpions, the usual wasteland fare and something his employer (and friend) could handle alone with his eyes closed. Charon was looking forward to getting back on track with the search for the G.E.C.K. but it wasn't to be. Daniel took one look at the run down town, surrounded by a muddy moat and piles of trash about the place and was determined to help them._

_The ungrateful little brats didn't even want to let them in, even with their new resident almost crying at their side. Eventually they persuaded the guard that they were neither slavers nor supermutants and the gate was opened. First order of business was to rescue some snot Nosed teenagers from supermutants, something Charon would not have chosen to do on a particularly selfless day and today was not one of them._

_Daniel was crouched down low in front of him, picking off the big green bastards one by one with the Lincoln Repeater while his bodyguard followed behind mopping up any still left alive. By this point the kid was good enough to survive the wastes on his own and Charon suspected he was only there as a friend these days._

_The first kidnap victim they found was a girl locked in a jail cell, apparently named Red, the town's doctor although she looked no older than eighteen. Once out the girl seemed capable enough, her sensible red jumpsuit suited well to sneaking and getting around which was more that could be said for a lot of people they had rescued in the past. The second was in the kitchen. Brave kid was actually arguing with a supermutant who was talking about eating him, Charon was shocked the kid had the balls. He was less impressed when Daniel pulled out his automatic laser pistol and the mutants head exploded, the adolescent boy was splattered with the miniscule amount of brain that had been in the Frankenstein's head and started screaming like a girl._

_Back at Big Town with it's residents in tow they were not applauded like heroes and instead asked more favours. Charon spent the next two days teaching the kids how to defend themselves while Daniel fixed up some broken and battered robots to help with the defence. They left the place far better off than when they came._

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          “Wow this place is pretty… did you say you've been here before Charon?” Poppy asked her ghoul who narrowed his eyes and nodded, “I'm guessing it wasn't always like this”  
       

          “No” he grunted and she thought it best not to pry, he'd opened up enough for one day.

          At an impressively tall gate made of broken old wood and surrounded by barbed wire a teenage boy peered down at them,

          “Who are you?” He shouted and Poppy immediately tensed at the sour tone in his voice, expecting something to kick off any moment,

          “This how you treat everyone visiting your town?” She snapped and felt Charon tense beside her, taking a cue from her tone,

          “Gotta check if you're a bitch or not” the boy argued back, unwisely because Poppy just pulled herself up to her full height and glared at him,

          “I'm not here to kick up shit but I will if some snot nosed kid talks to me like that again”

          “God alright lady, no need to be like that… shit I'll open the gate. But remember I've got my eye on you” the boy disappeared and she turned to her… friend,

          “He was a dick”

          “You weren't much better”  
“You're right, I just can't stand the idea of people thinking it's alright to insult me. It'sone step away from seeing me as weak”

“You aren't weak”

“Thank you Charon”

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          That night he watched her sleep. He wasn't quite sure why he did it, they were in a safe enough place that he could wander where he chose to. It hadn't been their plan to stay there but Poppy was tired and had asked about places to sleep before he could complain. It wasn't surprising, the girl was still a bit shaken from the Yao-guai attack and the shot she hadn't expected to manage. So he watched her as she laid there looking so peaceful, her hand under her face pushing her lips just enough for them to look pouty, her hair fell about her like a cross between a rats nest and a halo. She almost looked innocent, her freckled, scarred cheeks unusually flushed in the heat and she snored gently, the sound lulled him into a rare, restful sleep.

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          Charon dreamed, he couldn't remember the last time he had dreamed but he was right now and somehow he knew it even as it was happening. Soft skin slipped under his fingers where he ran them over a waist and the gentle curve of a hip. A satisfied hum came from somewhere near his head but he still didn't want to open his eyes and destroy this. No matter how much he wanted to tug at the naked smoothskin next to him, mount her and drive into her like fresh snow he didn't want to lose this moment either,

          “Charon” the voice was dripping with sleep and something he didn't entirely understand, something he hadn't heard in a long time and couldn't quite place. It was Poppy's voice, he knew that distantly in the back of his dreaming mind. He still didn't open his eyes, just ran his hand along the side of her toned body, “Charon I need you” there was a whine in her voice, a promise.  
He felt her shift beside him and push him down onto the… bed… they were in a bed together and she was near begging for him but he still didn't want to open his eyes. When he felt thighs either side of his ruined flesh he grinned, “please” she said it in a breathy voice, delicious enough to make him hard all on it's own. He felt her sink down, wet throbbing folds enveloping him in that first satisfying thrust.

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          “Charon… Charon” Poppy was trying to shake him awake, she had never seen him sleeping let alone making such odd noises or so deeply asleep he didn't wake at the slightest movement, “Charon wake up”

          In a sudden flurry of movement he jumped from the chair he was slumped over in, hands flying to her waist and taking hold of her hips hard enough to bruise. Before she knew what had happened she was on her back on the floor, pinned down by his hands on her hips and his body pressed between her legs. She couldn't stop the moan that left her lips as his hardness rubbed against her, an instinctive gut reaction but soon after she struggled against him.

          Her thrashing about and trying to pry herself from his grip seemed to cause him to come to his senses and his whole body stiffened,

          “Is this real?” He asked, gravel filled voice strangely small on someone usually so confident,

          “Yes… please let me go” he looked down at her in horror and lept back so quickly it was like she had burned him,

          “I am so sorry, I did not mean… I am so… Poppy did I hurt you?” She couldn't bring herself to look at him and just shook her head before picking herself up from the floor with as much dignity as she could muster, she didn't want him to know she was crying, “I understand if you cannot be around me anymore”

          “No, it's not that Charon I just…” her traitorous voice betrayed her breaking just enough to let him know how upset she was,

          “Poppy I am sorry, truly”

          “You don't have to be, it's not… you were half asleep and… well I suppose you must have been dreaming”

          “Yes”

          “I'm going to get a breath of fresh air, please don't follow, just for a while”

          “Of course” she could hear the shame and sadness in his voice and it tugged at her, she didn't want him to feel like that but she couldn't be in the same room as him right now.


	9. A Garden of Eden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both Charon and Poppy are dealing with the fallout of what happened in Bigtown and all the guilt and emotions entangled in it. But there's a more important task ahead, more important than figuring out who Charon is, she needs to find out who she is first.

          “Come on, let's go” Poppy was cold and Charon was regretting every second he had spent indulging himself in a dream about her. Had he not allowed himself to give in to the dream he wouldn't have woken confused between sleep and waking. He wouldn't have nearly assaulted the real Poppy imagining she was the version in his dream. No, no nearly about it, that had been assault, if he had seen any other man do that to her the bastard wouldn't have a head. Perhaps that was what he deserved. He liked the poetry of literally losing his head because he had figuratively lost it for a moment.

         His employer walked in front of him across the near desert outside of Big Town and ignored him. Charon felt the urge to catch up to her, to take her in his arms and make all the hurt go away, everything he had done and everything he knew it had reminded her of. For a moment he felt better for the fact that at least he knew where this reaction had come from, if she had not told him the day before about her past… sexual experiences… he would not have known why she was reacting so badly. Not that she needed a reason. It tugged at his chest until it felt like a bloody hole that she was looking at him and seeing the sick monsters who had paid to rape her. He never wanted her to think of them again let alone when she looked at him.

         For now he could just follow behind her, torturing himself with blame and hate and wait for something to happen. He had realised through all of this mess that he did truly care about her, far more than he had any other employer but one and Daniel had changed his life, and the lives of everyone in the wasteland forever.

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          The day was annoyingly uneventful. Poppy was just itching to kill something, take her frustrations out on the first animal brave or stupid enough to try them but nothing came. As the sun started to sink down, bathing the wasteland in glowing golds and reds Charon finally spoke to her,

          “We should make camp” he said hesitantly, they had barely spoken since that morning, well even more so than usual. She sighed and turned to face him but her eyes lingered on the ground just in front of him,

          “We should… where?”

          “That outcropping over there looks good” glancing up for a second she saw that he was pointing at the way some rocks had fallen to create a shallow cave that could keep any possible (but unlikely) rain off them and provide shelter on three sides from wasteland nasties. It was small though and Poppy didn't know if she wanted to be in such close proximity with her bodyguard right now. She just barely nodded and walked towards it, Charon on her heels but not too close.

          Once they had both eaten and the bedrolls were set up she tensed, half expecting him to lay down on the roll he had placed next to hers. Instead he picked up the sleeping bag and laid it over hers, “Double up, it'll be more comfortable. I'll take watch”

          “Thank you” she muttered, barely loud enough to hear and she saw him tense and nearly shiver before walking away, finding a spot about ten feet away and sitting down, shotgun in his lap.

          From this distance she felt comfortable to stare at his straight back and there she laid on her side and tried to puzzle out why she felt so awful about this. She didn't blame him, he hadn't been in control and would never have done something like that had he been aware but still it had shaken her trust. There had never been a man in her life she truly trusted, the closest being Scar and he was a sick and twisted man who had been responsible for her parents death. Charon had seemed so solid and trustworthy for the past month… not even that! She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that she had known him less than a month and she had already started to see him as her rock. But the rock had cracked, it wasn't his fault after all, contract or no he was just a man and no one is infallible. She had put him on too high a pedestal too quickly and should have known better, always had known better before.

          The worst thing, the thing she could barely admit to herself was that she had liked it, seeing for a fleeting second a man through the cracks in his marble. The look on his face as he had ground his hips into her, pure, unadulterated lust that had spoken to her on an instinctive level and had sent a shiver down her animal spine. It was hard for her, who, as a girl had been convinced to give her virginity to a raider boy because, “you're gonna get raped at some point anyway, so why not let me when you have a say in the matter”

           Sex for Poppy had always been one of two things, desperate and messy, born of a deep and shameful need or forced and painful, her being unable to say no. It was hard for her to marry the two things together, the idea of someone she actually liked and felt safe around also being someone who makes lust coil deep in her belly even if it is for just a second. With a sigh she reached for a jet inhaler, she saw Charon tense when the hiss of the thing filled her lungs but he said nothing. The tangles of drugged up nothingness worked their way into her mind and she soon drifted off to sleep, thought's erased until only blankness remained.

____________________

          Meanwhile Charon had no idea what she could be thinking, he had his alert and consistent ears trained on every little thing she did and he knew she wasn't asleep. Every so often she would sigh deep and loud as though she didn't know she was doing it, the noise ringing out into the silence of the wasteland night and feeling like a splinter in Charon's heart. He couldn't stop playing the guilt over in his head again and again.

           What's worse after a few hours of thought that morning he had managed to work out what had actually been real and what had been the dream. He could remember the way she had moaned when he ground his hard cock against her and now he was convinced that had been real. The sound kept replaying in his head, it was a shaking, stifled animalistic noise and every time it played he had to grit his teeth not to imagine her squirming under him as he roughly enticed those noises out of her. He couldn't handle the guilt that piled on top, the idea of getting pleasure from a noise pulled out of her when she was helpless like that.

          A hiss sounded from far behind him, he'd spent long enough in the 9th circle surrounded by junkies to know what it meant. He tensed up, hating it every time she took that damn chem, he had witnessed it destroy enough lives that he couldn't stand to see her do the same. Tonight though he couldn't blame her, whatever was running around in her mind must be awful enough for her to want desperately to forget. He would happily join her in that chemmed up nothingness if he didn't feel that sitting awake with his thoughts was a perfect punishment.

          Only it wasn't long after she finally fell asleep that his thoughts drifted elsewhere. He kept picturing her naked body writhing against him while he coaxed desperate whimpers from her with his fingers. He shook his head to drive away the thought but it was soon replaced by another, his scarred and cracked hands digging into the doughy flesh of her hips while he pulls her up onto his lap and thrusts into her. All the while that sound, that little two second moan ran around his head.

          His pants were tight enough now that he felt uncomfortable and he shifted his position, pawing roughly at his crotch to ease some tension. He let out a low growl as the slightest touch sent a sharp sting of pleasure to the sweet spot at the back of his brain, endorphins blossoming out and dying just as quick. Charon fought back, shaking the thought from his head determined not to give in. It felt wrong, disgusting, sick but as his subconscious assailed him with another daydream (this time Poppy bent forwards over a desk, her arse in the air, head turned to him and begging him to fuck her) he didn't care how wrong it was.

           Unzipping his pants and reaching in to free his cock he sighed at the relaxing tension. Running his fist along himself he imagined plunging into her wet pussy while she whimpered and shook. He'd fuck her slowly at first, imagining her tight and hot around him as his hand moved in a slow rhythm, teasingly slow. When she begged him in a desperate whining voice to go faster he would oblige, pushing roughly into her while he held her against the table with a scarred hand on her shoulder. A rough fingertip ran over his head as he pictured reaching down around her hips to find the little nub that would drive her wild. The thought of her screaming and writhing as he slammed into her hard and rubbed at her clit with perfect synchronisation was what tipped him over the edge, cumming into his waiting hand, enough to spill onto the parched earth.

          Catching his breath and coming down from his orgasm he felt shameful and just a bit disgusted, sitting there covered in his own semen while the girl who relied on his protection slept behind him. The same girl he had just fantasized about while jerking off. He hadn't really been much of a sexual beast for near on two hundred years, since before he turned, before he ended up in the employ of monsters who put him off the very idea of closeness with another person. He wondered if sex was always this confusing and guilt ridden for everyone.

____________________

          _He could hear them upstairs and part of him wanted to get out of the house while they were ‘at it’. Still another part of him, a long buried darker part, listened. At first it was her, that annoying woman, he was concentrating on and it really was nice to hear the muffled cries of a woman truly enjoying herself. They were in love, even an old cynic like Charon could see that and there was something special about that in such an inhospitable place._

_It was a while before he realised he was listening out for the more subtle noises. The quiet grunts and groans Daniel was making. A picture formed in his head of his employers face twisted in ecstasy, biting his bottom lip to hold back his noises as he thrust. Charon's eyes opened wide when he realised where his mind had drifted. He jumped up and all but ran out of the house, gasping in the stale air of Megaton._

_He never let himself listen to that again._

______________________

          That morning she woke feeling surprisingly well rested and ready to start the day. All the confusing thoughts swimming around in her head yesterday were pushed down, to be reexamined at a more convenient time. While she couldn't exactly bring herself to act the same around Charon she was happy he was with her for this.

          Today she was going to find her home and everything she could about who she was and where she came from.

          As they walked, her ahead and Charon on high alert a few paces behind her she started to notice something she had never expected to see. Little sprouts of green were appearing, sticking out of cracks in the tarmac of the road or growing from the rocks that usually surrounded them. These little green sprigs grew more common as they moved closer to the map point until whole clumps of green grass were growing out of the ground.

          Another thing Poppy noticed was the earth itself, where she was used to the hard, dry, solid mud of the capitol, underfoot was all of a sudden more springy, it sagged with each step. She kept stopping to stare at the ground or a little sapling making its way out of the mud below them. It cheered her up a little when she stopped for the fourth time to examine a small bush that had green leaves and he grumbled. If he was complaining under his breath that meant he too was feeling better about what happened, maybe something had eased his guilt?

          Remnants of neat and orderly crops marked the beginning of the farm, healthy green weeds pushed their way towards the sun between them. Poppy could barely believe her eyes when she saw the verdant life around her, she had never seen anything like it. For the first time in over a day she turned to look at Charon, really look at him,

          “Have you ever seen anything like this?” She asked him wide eyed,

          “Not like this no, but I have been to Oasis”

          “What's Oasis?” She asked, stepping delicately around a small weed that grew out of the soft soil (yes, at this point it could be called soil rather than the usual hard packed earth… some had gotten on her boots in a wet sloppy way and not like dust) she heard Charon stifle a laugh at her and had to stop herself from pretending to be offended by it,

          “Oasis is strange. It's towards the north, very very north, up in the mountains. There's a talking tree there that keeps all the plant life alive. It is much greener than this, everything is covered in grass underfoot and the trees are tall and leafy”

          “A talking tree?” She said sarcastically, she didn't believe it for one second but as they walked further and their surroundings became greener she almost could, “well without a magic talking tree how did this place get so… healthy?”

           “I don't know” Charon said, looking around at the clumps of thriving plant life. It wasn't quite everywhere, more about thirty percent of the soil was sustaining growing life, but it was better than the rest of the wastes and it's zero percent (well if you didn't count the dry, brown, mutated stuff that managed to eak out an existence through sheer determination or the crops a few settlements had managed to cultivate through blood sweat and tears).

          Sat in the center of this relative garden of Eden was a squat concrete building. Compared to all of this it was ugly with it's undecorated, harsh walls and square shape. Past it ran a little stream of flowing, clean water and to the far right the Potomac with it's Project Purity cleaned water,

          “This is a good spot” Charon said to her right, “just far away enough from the Potomac that it won't have problems with mirelurks and that little stream will naturally help with irrigation… your parents were smart”

          “They must have been… now I understand what Scar meant about them having more that enough food, anyone would be jealous of this”

          “And you don't remember any of it” Charon asked her, sounding incredulous,

          “No, I suppose it seemed normal back then and I must have just slowly forgotten about it. Really that time just comes in snippets and confused memories and doesn't everyone's childhood home seem a bit like Paradise?”

          “I suppose” he didn't sound sure, maybe this breaking down of trust she had felt went both ways, she hoped not.


	10. Finding a Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mystery is solved but it brings up so many more questions.

          The inside of the house was dark and dingy, the air hung with the scent of decay and cloying traces of mould. Everything was covered with a thin layer of dust and motes danced around in the light through the open door,

          “This is it?” Poppy said, the sound ringing out in the eerie silence of the room. Charon turned to see her face scrunched up in disappointment, he wasn't sure what she had expected, some sort of understanding to hit her the second she walked through the door maybe?

          “We should look around” was all he said and she nodded and moved slowly through the door. She looked smaller than he had ever seen her, it was almost as though the with the effort of this whole thing her very essence was seeping away.

          Charon followed his employer with a stern face, she was rummaging around in a dresser draw for anything useful and shaking her head and muttering to herself.

          Something felt off about the place and he couldn't quite figure out why, it was something niggling at the back of his mind, something obvious and hidden in plain sight. Walking around the room he got the urge to run his hands along the walls and didn't understand why. Charon wasn't naturally and inquisitive beast, he rarely got strange whims like this so he decided it must be his subconscious noticing something he hadn't and went with it.

          Off to the side, just around the corner from where Poppy stood pulling out drawers and grumbling, was a bookcase. Covered with trash and crumbling old books and odd tchotchkes it seemed like any old bookcase. He stood back and stared at it, trying to focus on why it felt so important. That was it, the floor below had grooves like the thing had been moved, swung out in the same way again and again. Running his hands back over the wall he could feel a dip at the side and an obvious hollowness behind it,

           “A hidden room, the clever shit!” He muttered to himself in disbelief, he was getting the impression that Poppy's parents were far from simple farmers. Leaning all his weight against the bookcase he was surprised when it moved easily on creaking, rusted hinges,

          “Charon!” Poppy called excitedly from around the corner but he was just staring in slack jawed awe,

          “Poppy I think you should come see this”

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          It wasn't what she expected, though she couldn't quite place what she had expected. The house was pretty much a normal wasteland dwelling once you looked past the fact that it was solid and had clearly been well maintained at one point. Disappointment washed through her as she stepped inside and with a sigh started to look through drawers filled with average looking trash.

          Despite being busy in her own task she was dimly aware of Charon running his hands along the wall and vanishing around a corner. She ignored him and got on with what she was doing, pulling out a few official looking documents that turned out to be from the Brotherhood of Steel. All along she had known her father had spoken of then too fondly to have not known them, apparently he had been a Knight. There were also documents giving him permission to own and farm the land around them from the Brotherhood, the names had been scribbled out and she pulled her brows together in frustration. At the least she wanted to learn her parents names.

           Then there it was, through the dust of time she had a vague memory of a trader with a camera and posing for a photograph when she was very young. Tears sprang in her eyes as she looked at their smiling faces, her father was tall, blonde and a little dorky looking, her mother had the same hair colour as her, a dark red, not quite ginger, not quite brown. Most importantly though they all looked happy, all three of them smiling on a sunny day stood in front of the house and her innocent little face, chubby like a cherub, was happy too. This could have been her life, this one little snapshot into a lost world could have stretched to all she knew and she wasn't sure if she cried from the loss of it or from seeing their faces again,

          “Charon!” She called out, hiding the tears behind excitement, she had been so wrapped up in staring at the little picture she hadn't noticed what he was doing at all. The loud scraping sound of moving furniture had been lost on her,

          “Poppy, I think you should come see this” her head snapped up at the hesitation in his voice, she wasn't used to his emotions being so easy to read. Something was wrong,

          “Charon?” She said, coming around the corner to see him stood by a displaced bookcase in front of a bare doorway, “Charon what is that?”

          “A hidden room… it's what's inside you need to see” she walked up to her companion's side and couldn't help the gasp that escaped her. Beyond the door was the strangest room she had ever seen.

           In the center of the back wall stood the focal point, a set of white power armour the likes of which she had never expected to see. Behind it a veritable armory of weapons hung on hooks to be displayed with almost reverence. Shelves lined one wall, upon which were various odd objects, interspersed with yet more weapons and explosives. A strange stand with odd looking figurines stood next to a jukebox on the other side and in odd places around the floor and shelves stood… garden gnomes. Poppy just stared, speechless and unsure what to make of it she simply passed the photograph that was clutched in her hand to her bodyguard and moved inside.

____________________

            Charon stared down at the small scrap of paper she had handed him and his suspicions (well more than suspicions at this point) were confirmed. He couldn't shake the slack jawed look of idiocy on his face as all the pieces of his employers puzzle slid into place. She was walking around the room touching things delicately as though they might break, a look of utter shock on her face.

          From the photograph in his mangled hands stared three familiar faces. A smiling Moira Brown holding a toddler that was unmistakably Poppy and next to them, his arms around his woman stood Daniel, the great Lone Wanderer and most powerful man in the whole of the wastes. He was smiling, like he was happy and content in a simple life on a farm.

           “It can't be… he died, they told me he died” he muttered to himself as he stared at the picture in disbelief, his mind for once completely blank of emotions. He couldn't for one second figure out how he should feel about this.

          Then, as he selfishly stood racking through his own head for some way to bring this all together Poppy fell to her knees on the dusty floor. Great wracking sobs ripped through her and stung him, for a moment he wanted to run as far away as fast as possible but he didn't. Instead he took a cautious step towards her, wanting nothing more than to make the noises stop, to turn her back into the happy excitable child that only he saw. With an unsteady hand he reached out and touched her shoulder and was surprised when she leaned her tear soaked face into his scarred and broken fingers.

          That was all it took, that little moment of contact and every ounce of self restraint fell away. He broke down, unable to actually cry real tears he just sobbed and fell to the ground beside her. Without even thinking, without any hesitation he pulled his employer into his lap and held her, just following what his instincts told him to do. She buried her head in his armour and wailed and he just held her there, the weight of her pressing against him was reassuring. It took him some time to realise that this was actually happening, his arms were wrapped around the object of his lust and it wasn't sexual in the slightest. He felt good, her body fitted into his like it had always meant to be there and he didn't want to let go for all the world.

____________________

          It had been unexpected when Charon touched her, even more so when he sat beside her and started to shake with his own unchecked sobs. She had relaxed and allowed him to pull her into his lap and just hold her there, his hands running softly up and down her back. After a while one of his big hands stopped moving and was cradling her head, allowing her to just cry into his chest. Being held like that, just held, no ulterior motive or anything wanted from her, it was something that had never happened. She felt safe and whole, protected and capable of facing anything, even this horrible and beautiful revelation.

          With huge, paw like hands she could have never guessed Charon could be this gentle. One of his hands threaded through her hair, his thumb stroking over the silky tresses the other running up and down her back with a lightness of touch that was shocking and comforting. She didn't know how long she stayed there, crying herself out until she was exhausted and letting the smooth motions of her bodyguard's hands lull her to sleep.

____________________

          He didn't realise she was sleeping until he heard those well known gentle snores and her hands slackened from where they had gripped his back like a lifeline. For a while he didn't know what to do. Should he carry her to the nearest bed? Lay her down and leave her alone to sleep? Truth is his decision was made for selfish reasons, he didn't want to let her go, wasn't ready to relinquish the warmth and weight of her. So with that in mind he just laid down then and there. Without letting go of her he simply lowered his body until he was laid with his back on the ground. Very carefully he manoeuvred her head so that it was laid on his chest and her body so that it was against his side. He pulled her sleeping figure close and just stared at her.

          It wasn't very comfortable laying there with his back against hard concrete. He wasn't expecting a long night of restful sleep but when he looked into Poppy's tear streaked face, so peaceful where it rested against him, he just couldn't bring himself to care about his own discomfort. Laying awake like that he just watched her sleep all night and long into the morning. He stayed there when his back nearly seized up from the cold, hard concrete below him, he stayed as his bladder cried at him for relief and he didn't move as he fought off the sleep of sheer exhaustion. He watched her and realised that he was no longer watching over her as a bodyguard but simply watching for what crazy, adorable, impressive thing she might do next. She still irritated the hell out of him though.


	11. Who Am I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy is trying to figure out who she is and Charon finally realizes what he feels. He isn't happy about it.

          Poppy woke up stiff, her head throbbing and she wondered how much she had drank last night. She stretched and rubbed a warm palm over her face with a groan before she even opened her eyes. The strange, stiff, warm pillow below her moved, shaking almost like someone laughing silently. Confused she opened her eyes to see leather armour below her cheek and looked above her to see the ruined face of her ghoul bodyguard,

          “Morning” he said, his usually gravely, accented voice deeper with fatigue,

          “Morning” she croaked back at him, not quite awake enough to react to the fact that she was cuddling up to the man that was in reality her slave no matter how well she treated him,

          “Water?” He asked, clearly catching onto the dryness of her throat. He carefully wriggled out from under her and laid her down on the hard cement floor. By the time he came back from their packs with water she had sat up and was looking around the room, memories of the previous night slowly slipping into her consciousness,

          “Are you alright?” Her stalwart ghoul asked as she took the water from him, a confused look on her face,

          “Yea but Charon… who am I?” He looked pained by this and Poppy wondered why,

          “I suppose you've guessed by now that your parents weren't farmers, not really”

          “Was my father the Lone Wanderer?” From looking around the room she had guessed as much, there were trinkets and keepsakes from all over and weapons and armour that could only have been handled by the best. Charon's reaction to the whole thing had cemented the idea in her head, he wouldn't have reacted like that had it been some adventurer he never knew. Still she wanted to hear it from his own mouth, needed it confirmed for sure,

          “Yes” was all he said but it was enough, everything about her life changed with that one word, all her memories of the past, her time with her family and beyond were seen with a different light,

          “What was he like?”

          “One of a kind, we travelled all over the wasteland together, he would always help anyone in need and seeing him fight was really something. He seemed to come alive when he could help someone and rid the wastes of one monster at a time”

          “Was he always like that?”

          “No, when he first came into the 9th circle he'd recently been shot and beaten and dragged into Underworld close to death. That's why he bought my contract at first. Once he got over the shock of it all, gained a bit of confidence out here he was unstoppable. He had a natural talent for weapons, like you do”

          “I remind you of him”

          “What?”

          “You said that, the first time we spoke you told me I reminded you of someone”

          “I did, and you do, no wonder really since he was your father”

          Poppy was quiet for a while, thinking, “You said he was dead but that doesn't make sense, surely he wouldn't have been here if he died when you were with him… right?”

          “I've been trying to puzzle that one out too. Truth be told I thought he had died just after passing my contract to Sarah Lyon's, he stepped into the purifier and was hit with so much radiation he couldn't have survived. Sarah was hurt pretty badly too but for weeks they wouldn't let me inside the Citadel to see either of them. I was told not long after that he had died of radiation poisoning”

          “But he didn't?”

          “No, not if you were born a year or so later, he lived for another… seven years. Yes the timing makes sense, the purifier has been running for almost twenty seven years and you are twenty five”

           “So my dad was the Lone Wanderer and my mum was Moira. I hope he cared for you”

           “He did, it was the happiest time of my life” until now

           “You loved him didn't you?” Charon choked and sat there stunned for a while and Poppy almost took back the question before he started to speak.

____________________

_Charon had been found banging against the strong thick glass and yelling at the top of his lungs by two power armour clad knights. His mind was so clouded by a heavy sense of grief he hadn't cared that his new employer lay dying to his side. The cloying discomfort that always came with denying an order or letting an employer get injured was nothing compared to the ache of losing Daniel._

_He was grabbed roughly and dragged away, dumped unceremoniously onto the ground outside the memorial. Tears didn't come, he didn't cry or sob though it would have helped ease the burning in his chest. Instead he embraced the anger, let it consume him and do all it could to clear his mind. Rage was useful, rage could fuel his actions where sadness would just leave him dull._

_When a vertibird landed and two stretchers were brought out he made his way over ready to climb into the craft. He was pushed away and yelled at, told to stay back like this had all been his fault. Maybe it had, he had wanted to be the one to enter the irradiated chamber, should have insisted on it but his employer, Daniel, his friend had issued one of only two orders he had ever given him,_

_“Stay here, don't stop me no matter what that's an order. I'm sorry Charon, this is just something I have to do and I can't let you risk yourself to save me”_

_Charon ran, chasing after the vertibird until it was gone from sight. It didn't matter, he knew where it was going._

______________________

_The gates of the Citadel were locked tight, the guards on duty ignored him, acted like he wasn't there,_

_“You have to let me in, I have to see Daniel and Sarah” he raged, they still ignored him. Even when he pulled out his shotgun and pointed it in their faces they looked through him. He couldn't shoot them though, this group of people were responsible for Daniel's care._

_Instead of ranting and raving like his gut told him to, or worse, shooting the place up, he paced. Back and forth back and forth over the same six steps again and again. It was monotonous and an empty use of energy but he could not bring himself to leave or even eat and sleep. His contract holder was inside and his training told him he had to be near her but his heart told him he couldn't leave Daniel._

_In the end he waited for four days with no sleep of food, he drank dirty water while continuing his pacing and paused only to relieve himself. On the dawn of the fifth day he was told Daniel was dead and Sarah was in critical condition. He felt like breaking down, or breaking the man in front of his neck but the simple brandishing of a piece of paper put a stop to that. This man was his employer now, he had been gifted to Knight Allen for good service like an object or a prized hunting dog and from then on that was what he would feel like._

______________________

          “You loved him didn't you?” He but back an immediate and vicious reply, his instincts telling him to deny it with all the rage that was in him. He didn't know what love was, didn't think it actually existed… then again he had seen it in the way Daniel had looked at Moira and somewhere deep down he knew he longed to be looked at that way but the idea of loving Daniel,

          “I'm not gay” he muttered, it was his last line of defence against the accusation of love, a pointed reminder of a sexuality he hadn't explored in hundreds of years,

          “Didn't say you were, sometimes someone is so special, so important to us that we love them despite ‘leaning the other way’” she actually did air quotes, little bunny ear gestures with her fingers and it was enough to almost make him laugh. Maybe she was right, maybe he had felt that way about Daniel and refused to admit it to himself. And there was Poppy in front of him, so like her father, strong and smart and kind. He thought about what he had said to her that first day ‘you remind me of him’ he hadn't known then what it meant.

          Poppy was beautiful, he felt drawn to her just like he had her father and he had realised long ago that he no longer followed her simply because of the contract. She was his friend, he cared about her and wanted to protect her from any harm, not just physical. He wanted to heal her scars, hold her, fuck her, everything, he wanted her everything. He was in love with her. This was it, this was how love felt and god damn it hurt.

           The urge to kiss her bubbled up from his chest and became so strong he found himself staring at her lips, wondering how soft they would feel against his own ruined mouth. He felt his body tilt slightly towards her without permission, bypassing his mind. Violently shaking his head he stood up and paced out of the room.

_____________________

          What the hell had just happened? For a long while Charon had just sat in front of her and stared. It felt like he was truly looking at her for the first time, really examining every bit of her face. The feeling made her shudder, like being a bug under a microscope. Then his gaze had landed on her lips, he'd move just a tiny bit closer and her heart started to race. She didn't know what to do, the look in his eyes was something she had never seen before from anyone. Like he was just, blank, like his mind had switched off and all he saw was her and it scared her. Then, just like it had never happened he shook his head and all but ran from the room.

          The sound of his footsteps, heavy against the rug and dust covered concrete floor, filtered through to her. He was pacing and she could faintly hear him muttering to himself, barely able to make out individual syllables let alone words. Poppy sat with her long legs crossed in front of her on the cold floor of her father's secret room and tried to gather her thoughts.

           The revelation about who her parents were was hard enough to get her head around. She could have had a great life with them, grown up so her name matched who she was rather than feeling like it didn't fit the tough, fiery fighter that she had become. And now on top of that Charon was acting so strange, if it hadn't been him, if any other man had looked at her like that she would have thought he was about to kiss her. But not Charon, the moody, stoic ghoul never seemed less than irritated by her. Fine he had proven to her only a day ago that he was a man with full fledged male urges but she hadn't for one second thought that had been about her. She was the chain around his neck, the rope binding his hands and the person forcing him to march. It would be no surprise if he hated her, even if he was slowly opening up to her. No it couldn't have been that, he wouldn't have wanted to kiss her from any kind of emotional reaction.  
She thought back on his last words ‘I'm not gay’ she had insinuated he had felt romantically towards another man.

          Poppy had a dim, fifth or sixth (or more) hand awareness that before the war being gay had been a bad thing, at this point it was nothing really but maybe Charon still held onto some of that. He was pre war she knew that much, he'd have been brought up with those values. That's it then, he was either about to prove to her just how not gay he was or more likely he had fought off the urge to hit her. Somehow both ideas sent a rush to the apex of her thighs and she had to squash down that idea.

          When she finally got up and went through to the room in which her bodyguard paced it was clear he wasn't going to open up. She figured he would do so in his own time if he needed to and just hoped that his own time wasn't a hundred or so years away,

          “What now?” She asked him and he stopped pacing and looked up at her with such rage in his eyes she took a step back. For the first time since their unorthodox introduction she was actually scared of him but, with a single blink over his milky eyes he was back to his usual almost bored expression,

          “I suppose all of that is yours” he said gesturing at the room with a slight tilt of his head. His voice still carried a little residual anger,

          “I suppose… do we take it all back to Megaton?” She didn't really like the idea of having to figure out some way to lug it all back there,

          “I can always set up traps and defences here, it's gone this long not being found”

          “Yea, I guess. Don't you want to find out why the Brotherhood lied to you?”

          “I know why, they're all a bunch of pricks is why” she almost laughed at herself when she was shocked enough flinch back for a second but realised this was part of his usual irritable self. It clearly didn't take Charon long to bounce back,

          “Maybe, but I want to know”

          “Fine, I suppose I'll follow you anyway” he said folding his arms and glaring down at her, god he really did hate her,

          “OK, you go set up defences and I'll snoop about for anything else. Don't worry Charon we'll put this mystery together one way or another”.

____________________

          By nightfall the immediate area around the house was a literal minefield thanks to Daniel's vast collection of the things. Charon had set them up and drawn a detailed map for Poppy to follow, luckily her paces were similar to his so it had been easy to count them out for her. He wouldn't need a map, this wasn't the first active minefield he'd set up and he remembered each and every one.

          Further out amongst the fields of unkempt crops he'd set up other, less advanced traps like hidden holes and tripwires. Again he'd drawn up a map on how to find them for his employer, the woman he loved. It had taken all day and he was exhausted but happy that he had done all he could to protect her and this place, the last place that Daniel had lived,

          “Don't whatever you do lose these” he handed her the two pieces of stiff card, strong enough to withstand most damage but really he worried about them getting water damaged or even soaked in blood,

          “What are they?” She looked up at him from where she sat on a stained and dusty sofa, her eyes were round and curious, sparkling and his heart stopped for a second. How had he never noticed the way her eyes sparkled in the light of the setting sun?

          He grunted, “they're maps of the traps I've set up, come to the window” they did, both looking out the big panes of solid glass, “see that tree over in the distance, the big one with shattered branches”

          “Yes” her voice rang like a choir of bells and Charon had to stop himself from closing his eyes and demanding she just talk,

          “Start there, if you take the exact number of steps the map says and turn the right amount each time it says it'll bring you to that rock that looks like a sleeping dog. That's where the minefield starts-”

          “The what?” She interrupted him, shocked and he growled low in his chest, “sorry”

          “It's fine, there is a minefield surrounding the house up to a five foot circle around. Once you are past that fence” he pointed to a rickety, half fallen apart picket fence around the property, “you are safe to do as you please. Past the fence only follow the directions on this map, these traps are deadly and not to be underestimated”

          “Wow you really went all out”

           “There is more than just things to protect here” her face turned to him, expression telling him she knew exactly what he meant and he had to stop himself from staring at her slightly parted lips,

           “Thank you” she gazed up at him for a moment, “I think there may be an old laminator back in Megaton, in case they get wet… by the way I found Moira's diary, there's a few things in here that might help, listen to this…” with that the spell was broken and she paced away, book in hand. Charon tried to listen but he couldn't figure out how to deal with these new… feelings (he thought the word with a mental shudder). It was like the second he realised he loved her the floodgates opened and now every little thing she did was mesmerizing, “I got a letter today from the Brotherhood, it was so exciting, all official and important. Most of it was redacted but I'm going to work on reading the rest through the black ink later, I'm sure I can figure it out.

          “It told me Daniel had died, but it's OK because I turned it over and on the back was writing in pencil ‘ignore everything in this letter, I am very much alive and I'll come for you on the twelfth. Erase this message and show the rest if the letter to everyone. Tell them all you're so distraught you're moving away to write a book about farming, make sure everyone knows you're going away. See you on the the twelfth. I love you’ isn't that sweet and oh so romantic. Daniel is coming to whisk me away to start a new life away from all of this and I couldn't be more excited. Oh I'm going to do so much research on how to manage out on a farm on your own… it might end up two books” Poppy looked at him with her brows held high in disbelief, “was my mother certifiably insane?”

          “She was certainly… eccentric”

          “It goes on in that same happy bubbly tone right up until… until that day… there isn't an entry for that day”

          “Bring it with you and anything else you want, we will return to Megaton in the morning… if that is what you wish” she gazed up at him pained, as though he has just reminded her of something bad,

          “Yea sure”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Yea... That happened (also Charon is a bit Bi, or pan, or... Something)


	12. Back To Megaton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy and Charon return home and are regailed with tales of the lone wanderer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had a bit of a long... Sabbatical... From wrighting. Not many of you know this but I have a chronic illness and having moved house had to get a new doctor which had a very negative effect on my health. Things are getting back towards normal now so hopefully the writing will continue.

          "How was the trip? Did you find what you needed?” Nova asked before even saying hello when they entered the nearly empty bar. Poppy had insisted they come here right away even if it was pretty much midday and the only people there were the owners and hardened drinkers. Really she just needed to see a friendly face, something about Charon had changed and he was constantly second guessing himself, asking her permission to do everything and making sure she was OK constantly. On the way back barely anything attacked them, the most scared she had been was when they spotted a deathclaw in the far distance but it either didn't notice them or didn't care and they skirted past it nervously.

          What's more she kept catching him staring at her with a mix of anger and wistfulness that she easily recognized. It was the same look that had twisted her face every time she wished for freedom and was reminded it was a pipe dream. With everything it was like he was trying to remind her he was a slave, trying to make her feel guilty for being the one who owned him. She could barely take it anymore and Nova and Gob would, hopefully, remind her she was a halfway decent person.

           “It was… revealing” she choked out as Nova wrapped her in a tight hug before turning towards Charon about to do the same. The look on his face must have served as enough of a warning because she thought better of it and backed away,

          “Well, tell us all about it” she ordered, turning her attention back to Poppy,

          “You'll want to be sat down, possibly with a drink in your hand” Nova eyed her suspiciously for a moment,

          “There's a table over there, I'll get Gob and a bottle of something” the way she spoke was dark and Poppy wondered what the old woman might be thinking.

____________________

          Once they were all settled around a table, glasses of whiskey in front of each of them and the bottle in the center Poppy heaved in a deep sigh, “We found the farm...”

           “Well go on…” Nova demanded, Gob rolling his eyes at her,

          “We did find out something… who my parents were but it wasn't what we expected...” another pause and a deep sigh, she wasn't sure how they would react, “actually, you know them, pretty well”

          “GOB!” Nova shouted, smacking her husband (gently mind you) around the back of the head… this was not expected,

          “Ow, what the hell woman?”

          “Well the girl's clearly hinting at something and I may have been strung out but I think I'd have noticed having a baby” Poppy's eyes went wide and she bit her lip to stifle a laugh, Nova had got completely the wrong end of the stick, “of course if you are Gob's child you'll find love and a happy home here”

          “Nova stop being stupid, I've been a ghoul a good few decades too long for that to even be possible”

          “Oh… right” the ex proustite managed to look sheepish, “what were you getting at then doll?”

          “Daniel and Moira… my parents were Daniel and Moira” Poppy spat out, eyes still wide,

          “What?.... No that…. They've been long dead, you can't be” Gob blurted out like he was thinking aloud,

           “I am, I have proof” she pulled the photograph from an inside pocket of her leathers and laid it out on the table,

          “Oh sweetie we don't need proof to believe you… but god that is you, and that's Daniel and Moira. I did think you looked a bit like him when you first came in, same round cheeks and big eyes and you've got Moira's hair” Nova stood from the table, almost crying and held out her arms for another hug, “oh god it's like you're part of the family, your father was our friend, he saved us”

          “She's right, you'll always be welcome here like a family member… your dad really did save us” Gob said, repeating his wife,  
“What do you mean saved you?” The couple looked at each other and in hushed tones started to tell the real story of how Moriarty died.

____________________

_“We have to do something about it” the kid whined, Charon looked up from the magazine he'd been reading. They'd spent two fucking days in this tip of a shanty town and already Daniel had found someone to save… hell he'd already deactivated the bomb before he even met Charon, basically saving the whole town,_

_“You can't save everyone kid” Charon said with a sigh, Daniel took umbridge at this, he looked at his bodyguard hurt, Charon just rolled his eyes,_

_“Gob's my friend, so is Nova and you know what Moriarty is doing to them”_

_“Have you ever killed someone kid?”_

_“Well yea, raiders and stuff”_

_“Anyone who wasn't trying to kill you first” the kid nervously shook his head, “look, you're still green when it comes to wasteland law which is pretty much no law. If Moriarty doesn't get kicked out of town there's nothing you can do short of killing him”_

_“I could persuade him into letting Gob and Nova go”_

_“Never gonna happen”_

_“Pay for them then”_

_“And you think he won't keep bumping up the price till he just owns you too?”_

_“He wouldn't do that”_

_“You've seen Gob's bruises since I explained how ghouls bruise, you think someone capable of doing that isn't gonna be capable of anything?”_

_“Alright I'll kill him”_

_“Could just order me to do it”_

_“Do you want to?” Charon shrugged, he couldn't care less if Moriarty lived or died so long as he wasn't a threat to his employer, “then I'm not going to make you… although you could help me figure out how”_

_______________________

_Charon could hear struggling in the_ _back room, the rest of the patrons were far too loud or drunk to hear anything but he was listening for it. The plan had been for the Vaultie to get that prick riled up enough to attack him. Getting caught hacking into his computer should do it, that was a slap on the wrist offence and if he then shot the arsehole while defending himself… well that was just the way things go in the Wastes._

_The ghoul had only agreed to it if they had a code word and a series of knocks in case the kid somehow got gagged (it wouldn't have been surprising). Charon listened out for one of these, ready to jump to his employer's defence all the while looking nonchalant with an untouched drink in front of him. It wasn't fool proof and he half expected the wet behind the ears kid to mess it up somehow but it would be hard._

_A loud gunshot rang out silencing the noisy chatter in seconds, everyone jumped up and ran for the door out of the place._

_Everyone that is but Charon, who ran towards the sound and Jericho who was hot on his heels. That was unexpected. Charon looked nonplussed and the ex raider behind him just laughed at the scene of the kid with rope around one arm and a gun in the other hand and Moriarty bleeding on the floor, his blank eyes staring at the ceiling and a bullet hole ripped through his chest,_

_“He tried to tie me up… his other hand was round my throat”_

_“Let me have a look kid” Charon gestured for Daniel to step closer and examined his neck, yep those were bruises from Moriarty's fingers alright. A flash of anger ran through him, even if the marks were yet more proof that the kid wasn't to blame,_

_“I'll go get Simms, don't you worry kid he's not gonna have you clapped in irons for defending yourself” the raider said before heading to the door._

_Simms just took everything in, nodding_ _occasionally while the boy stuttered through his story. It helped that the raider backed him up when he had nothing to gain from lying. Nova and Gob got the bar and it was months before the kid eventually blurted out that it had been his plan all along. Thankfully they were alone in the bar after hours when he did._

______________________

          Poppy spent the whole time the story was being told glancing at him, her eyes full of awe and curiosity,

          “You really did all that?” She asked once a tale of desperate heroism far more exaggerated than the original had been woven,

          “No”

          “Oh… well… oh” she suddenly looked very young and he had to fight the urge to hug her again. He sighed,

          “Nova is exaggerating quite considerably, I did very little”

          “It was a lot to us” the barmaid said, “we'll always be grateful to you and Daniel”

          “You really hate slavery don't you” Poppy asked him concerned once both Nova and Gob had drifted off to their work, “You did that and you killed my… owner, you told me you killed everyone at Paradise Falls once. Shame that didn't stick”

          “All of those things where due to the contract, I personally think fighting against slavery is like pissing in a river and expecting it to turn gold. There will always be more river”

          “Are you happy Charon?” She was looking him up and down with real, gods honest worry and the idea of someone like her being concerned about his happiness was as foreign as a fish in the air,

          “I am happier with you than I have been with any other employer, including Daniel”

          “Oh… well good. You'd be happier if I weren't your employer though?” He looked at her a little surprised, like she could somehow see the thoughts he was having about her. Yes, he would like her to be much much more than an employer. It dawned on him that maybe she meant he'd be happier free, either way the answer was the same,

          “That is impossible”

          “But if I could get rid of that stupid paper, you'd be happier right?”

          “Yes”

          “Would you leave me if it weren't forced? I mean, I can look after myself well enough now so I suppose I don't need you, you could go without feeling guilty” why did it feel like she was sending him away? Like she didn't want him about anymore? Maybe she could read his mind and was sickened by all the things he wanted to do to her. He didn't want to admit to her that he would happily follow her to the ends of the earth of his own free will. He dodged the question instead,

          “It is not a possibility so why bother thinking about it”

          “You're right” she bowed her head, looking sad for a moment, “I'm gonna head home, you coming?” he nodded and followed behind her, always the good lapdog or more, guard dog, never anything more.

____________________

          She laid in bed wide awake in the room that had been her mother's, Charon was across the landing in the room that had been her father’s. It was hard to think like that, somehow through fates messed up and twisted sense of humour she had stumbled into an odd mirror of her parents life. This house was her father's, the shop across the way was her mother's… her slave had been her father's.

          That one hurt, the conversation with Charon ringing around in her head. The way he spoke it was like he really couldn't imagine a life without his contract, a life where he could just up and leave her. He wouldn't answer when she asked if he would leave, probably because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. One moment he acted like he liked her, maybe even cared at least enough to hold her when she cried, let her fall asleep against his chest. Then suddenly he seems… distant, like he's holding something back from her.

          A noise from Charon's room filtered through into her conscious, something like a stifled moan. Then another, a grunt timed with a rattle of his bed… was he? No… he was! If she listened really hard she could hear the sound of flesh smacking against flesh. At first she was uncomfortable, it was definitely embarrassing to hear your… friend?… employee?… housemate? indulging in some… personal time. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn't stop herself from listening to the sounds. Poppy could picture it (an active imagination had got her through a lot in the past) his hands were rough, not like sandpaper, more like old leather. These leathery, ruined hands were currently running over his cock, would it be rough too? Probably and the surface would be broken and scarred running in ripples between his fingers.

          She indulged herself enough to think maybe he was thinking about her, the idea felt so deliciously sinful. Her hand snaked down the silk nightie that covered her belly, finding her wet folds and pulling a gasp from her lips. In her mind the big burly bodyguard was picturing her pinned against a wall by his mass while he reached between her legs and pushed his fingers into her. Her free hand flew over her mouth to stifle a moan when she penetrated herself with her own long thin fingers. His were much thicker, she knew, he'd only fit one at first, carefully working in a second. She heard a growl and pictured that every time he coaxed a breathy moan from her he would growl like that, desperate to be inside her.

          Maybe he was imagining losing control, wrapping her long flexible leg around his waist, his hard cock rubbing against her arse while he pushed her front against the wall. He'd ease in slow, the broken skin on his cock rubbing just the right spots. Before long she'd be begging him to go faster, fuck her harder and he would. She couldn't stop the strangled keen that slipped out between her fingers when she moved faster, her palm tilted just right to rub against her clit every time she thrust into herself. Now she was squirming on the bed, fingering herself desperately and struggling not to cry out, little muffled moans escaping as her thighs shook just on the brink of orgasm.

          A noise that sounded like a bellow around a fist from the other room was just enough to push her over the edge. She felt it right down to her toes as euphoria washed over her in waves leaving her thrusting into her own hand as she rode it out. Collapsing back on the bed, almost numb with a feeling of floating she realised she hadn't cum like that in years… it was all thanks to a mad fantasy about the ghoul in the next room.

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          Charon was lost in the moment, in his mind he was holding tight onto Poppy's hips, guiding her movements as she rode him hard. Sweat glistening on her skin she would be breathless and struggling not to scream out his name. He grunted, he couldn't help it, the images and his hand working his shaft felt too good to hold it in. He bit the ruined remnants of his lip to stop it from happening again even if he did think Poppy was asleep. God even her name, Poppy, it was the name of someone sweet and innocent, someone he would ruin in seconds but in reality she was tough, a fighter. She could take it, she'd love the way his scarred fingers pressed into her flesh leaving bruises. She'd shake with passion when he smacked her arse and thrust up into her forcefully, making her cry out.

          He could almost hear the noises she'd make as he pinched her nipples or pulled her down to bite at her neck, marking her as his. He could hear her breathy moans… wait… he COULD hear her breathy moans… shit. He almost came the second he realised the barely there, little, desperate trilling sounds were real and coming from Poppy's room. The thought of her spread open, fingers working herself right now was enough to get him there. He shoved one ruined fist in his mouth to muffle the cry as he orgasmed to pictures of her touching herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were interested the wirking title of this chapter was "wankception".


	13. Intervetion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy hatches a plan to find out what really happened to her family and Nova is the only one who notices what's right in front of everyones faces.

          “I want to go and talk to the Brotherhood” He looked up from cleaning his gun on a workbench in the living room. It was busywork, he'd already cleaned it once that day but he needed something to do. Since that night, yes that one, you all know the one, he hadn't been able to look his employer in the eye and he got the feeling she felt the same,

          “Why would you want to do that?” He asked, looking anywhere but directly at her,

          “Because I want to find out what happened… with you and Daniel”

          “I doubt they will just let you waltz in and start asking questions”

          “They aren't exactly some big force to be reckoned with anymore, ever since that ship of theirs got chased out of the Commonwealth or so I heard. Didn't someone kill their big bad leader and ever since they've been in hiding?”

          “That doesn't mean they'll talk to you” he felt like rolling his eyes, he also felt like running away with just Poppy, living in the middle of nowhere and forgetting all of this. Maybe that's how Daniel had felt,

          “I'm the Lone Wanderer's daughter, doesn't that mean something?”

          “Not enough to them. Have you not learnt anything from that diary?”

          “Not about why the Brotherhood said he'd died she just wrote that he didn't want to talk about it. I did learn one thing though, apparently all that green was something to do with Oasis, they got the sap from there, mixed it with water and spread it over the farmland, did that once a week for six months and everything started growing”

          “Fascinating” he wasn't fascinated, he wanted her to stop talking so he could get on with cleaning his gun to distract him from her. This love thing is a bag of shit, all it brought him was nights awake and pining over a girl who would most likely cringe at the thought of him touching her. Then again she hadn't yet, thinking back over their month together he had touched her many times each one simple and passing. He'd even carried her drunk arse home a few times and held her while she slept once and she hadn't ever shown any negative reaction. Maybe… nahhh not a chance,

          “We need to plan, get supplies, plot a course… you know all that shit you're so fond of”

          “I am not ‘fond of’ planning, it is simply a necessity”

          “And we're going to do it for a trip to the Citadel” he could have growled, could have ranted and raved or maybe gone on a killing spree but what difference would it make? The stubborn woman had her mind made up and he would always follow her.

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          Nova was sat in their usual spot at the bar and jumped up the second they pushed through the door. Poppy scanned around the room for threats even though she knew full well Charon was doing the same already. The usual group of hardy drunks were in their usual spots dotted about the establishment staring at the alcohol in front of them. Some things might change day to day but drunks… drunks never change.

          The old barmaid was slowly shifting her gaze between Charon and Poppy, a look of appraisal in her eye. After a while she just smiled that knowing smile, the one that told you she knew all your dirty little secrets,

          “Come… sit” Nova invited, gesturing at her just emptied bar stool, “drink?”

          “Not today Nova, we came to tell you we're heading out again”

          “I guessed it wouldn't be too long, you don't seem like the type to keep still… neither did your dad”

          “Yea I know, I keep reading Moira's journal although I swear at least some of it is just make believe or… did she have any kind of psychosis?”

          “Not to my knowledge but with half the strange experiments she did I wouldn't be surprised if she hallucinated once in awhile” the two of them laughed, Charon just watching them solemnly, “look kid, I've gotta ask you something”

          “Yea what?”

          “In the back” Nova stood and grabbed Poppy's wrist, causing Charon to jump straight to the defensive, his knife drawn and pointed at the old woman in warning. He mustn't have thought her that much of a threat, if he had wanted it she would be dead already but instead he gave her a chance. Nova dropped Poppy's wrist, “god Charon, you're such a killjoy”

          “Where are you taking her?” The ghoul rumbled, his angry tone could have crushed cars,

          “In the back, I need some girl time alright?”

          “No funny business Nova”

          “Oh what do you expect me to do? Dress her up and change her name? Run for the hills and set up our own colony of bloatflies?” He didn't even dignify this with an answer, just glared at the woman and Nova let out a sadistic laugh. Poppy couldn't help but wonder, and not for the first time, what the little ex prostitute was capable of.

____________________

          In the back they entered a room Poppy hadn't been in before, it was dingy and dark with a desk and computer to one side and a tall bureau beside that. What struck her most was the mess, the place was a complete contrast to the clean and organised bar beyond the curtained door. It was like the room was in a constant state of organised chaos. Turning back towards Nova she jumped at how close the old barmaid was, a knowing and ever so slightly venomous look on her face,

          “So… you and Charon?” Nova asked, Poppy knew it was a leading question and exactly what she was talking about but decided to play the innocent and avoid answering for as long as possible,

          “Me and Charon?” She purposefully painted a confused look on her face but to no avail, Nova picked up on how fake it was immediately,

          “Don't try and play coy with me… have you two...?” Poppy continued her confused ploy “made the beast with two backs? Bumped uglies…. Oh shit Poppy… have you had sex?”

          “No”

          “Do you want to?”

          “Nova, he's for all intents and purposes my slave, there is no situation in which that is going to happen”

          “Yea… right” the older woman rolled her eyes as though she knew so much more than Poppy, “look I don't mean to stick my nose in where it doesn't belong… oh hell who am I kidding, yes I do. Anyway you need to know what you're getting into before something does happen. Things have changed a lot recently but not everywhere, there are places in the wasteland that won't like the fact that you have or are sleeping with a ghoul”

          “Nova you say that like I've never had sex with a ghoul before”

          “Have you?”

          “Yes, although it wasn't exactly a pleasurable experience for me, I just shut my eyes and waited for it to be over”

          “Then why would you want to do that again?”

          “I have been… made… to sleep with a lot more human men who treat me a lot worse than one ghoul… not that I want to… seduce Charon or anything”

          “God why not, he's gorgeous and he's mad about you”

          “No he's not, mad at me maybe but he looks at me the same way as I did my old master “ she shuddered,

          “Did your old master look like you? Or act like you do around him?”

          “Well no but the principal is still there” she sighed and shook her head, still convinced Charon could hate her on principal alone, “Nova we gotta get going, we still need to get supplies and an early night if we're going to set off tomorrow”

          “We eh?”

          “Shut up Nova”

____________________

          Charon was gritting his teeth and balling his fists at his side. It wasn't enough that they had to come back here again but that damn kid was working today and hanging on his girl’s… no his employer’s every word. From where he stood he couldn't really hear what was being said as she flitted around the store picking things out. He wasn't really bothered with listening either, just watching and hearing the tone of their voices.

          The little spotty shit was infatuated, that much was clear in the way he almost sighed each word. Poppy wasn't exactly helping maybe she thought she'd get some discount if she flirted a little, flinging her hair about and looking him right in the eye. It's not like it was worth it, they had plenty of caps especially now she didn't feel bad about spending Daniel's money, what with him being her father and all. In reality she could probably argue that this store was rightfully hers, if she was that way inclined she could claim half the Capitol Wasteland.

          It was most likely a game to her, he knew she wasn't evil but every woman liked that kind of attention didn't they? Maybe in all this she wasn't aware that she'd dragged Charon into her little web and was currently driving him feral. He wanted to knock that smirk off this snarky teenagers face. Hell he wanted to hit the kid so hard he'd break his face apart, maybe he'd leave the smirk then, he can keep that if he has no face,

          “Charon… CHARON!” He shook his head, surprised he had drifted off into fantasies about hurting the boy so much Poppy had had to shout to get his attention. He faced her, trying to look like he had been listening all along, “do you need anything?”

          “Ammo”

          “Yup, got that”

          “Grenades”

          “Those too, and three mines if we have to hole ourselves up somewhere for the night… I more meant things like a favourite food or a spare set of clothes, do you need anything like that?”

          “Armor, leather armor to fix this up” his stuff wasn't too bad, he'd been taking much better care of it since he'd been with Poppy but he had something worth protecting now and he wouldn't let one unnoticed tear or worn patch mean her death,

          “Right, one set of leather armor, the best you've got”

          “OK I'll go grab it” the child (the stupid, idiotic, dipshit child) pretty much ran to the other end of the store and back, the less time to be away from his obsession, “that'll be… well it should be one thousand caps but since it's you we'll say eight hundred”

          “Oh that's so nice of you Billy… thank you”

          “Oh it's nothing… you still haven't let me take you out for drinks so…” he left the statement open and Charon hoped the floor would open up underneath the son of a bitch (well maybe, he didn't know Maggie all that well) and drag him to the fiery pits of hell,

          “You always seem to catch me just when we're about to head out” yea and that's no coincidence, she avoided the place like it was on fire until they needed supplies for a trip,

          “You only seem to come in here then”

          “Do we?” She played innocent and Charon couldn't deny the swell of pride every time she insisted on saying ‘we’, “I suppose we do… well, maybe I'll pop in another time when we're back in town.

____________________

          “You are leading that boy on” he pointed out when they made it outside the shop, arms weighed down with supplies,

          “Oh I am not, he knows it's just a bit of harmless flirting I'm sure. Probably happens all the time”

          “I doubt it, he is practically a child”

          “You're right, should I go explain?” She said sarcastically, looking up at him like she might either burst out laughing or dash towards the store to call his bluff,

          “No, just don't do it again”

          “I shouldn't need to”

          “Why not?”

          “Well I've been thinking about the future, once this whole mystery is solved I'd like to explore a bit, we could always use the farm as a base instead of here. I'd want to come visit Nova and Gob sometimes but not too often”

____________________

_“Once project purity is finished I think I'd like to stop all of this adventuring” the kid, who wasn't such a kid anymore told him while they walked through the vault, silent other than his whisper, “you me and Moira could find a nice spot for a farm”_

_“Wouldn't I be a bit unnecessary?”_

_“Probably but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want my best friend with me” Daniel smiled up at him with that winning grin that always made him do exactly what the kid wanted,_

_“You will always be 101, people will seek you out to help and you will be unable to say no”_

_“I'll worry about that when it comes to it”_

_“Hello? Is someone there?”_

_And that is when they met Fawkes, the huge, towering supermutant with the strength of ten and an intelligence that would be impressive for a human. Charon was sore that the kid had let the damn thing out at all so when Daniel asked if he would be safe getting the G.E.C.K he answered angrily,_

_“I'm nobody's errand boy” he regretted that one as soon as the eager supermutant offered to go, so far proving a lot more useful than Charon._

_With the G.E.C.K in hand it should have been a quick run back to the Citadel. They never made it out of the Vault, the Enclave were waiting for them._

______________________

          “Right I think that's it” she said, standing with her hands on her hips over some of their possessions spread out on the floor. At the side stood two bags, military green canvas and big, with deep pockets all over the front and sides and heavy duty straps. She glanced over to Charon, wondering if he had anything to add but he was just busying himself with his armor repairs,

          “Charon, do you think I got everything?”

          “Humm?” He looked up at her, he'd been acting unusually distracted since he spoke to her about flirting with the shop boy and Poppy was worried he was annoyed with her (more so than usual anyway). He pushed himself up to his considerable height and walked over to stand by her and survey the items spread out neatly in the floor, “that seems right, make sure clothing is on the bottom and ammo and medical things on the top, everything else goes in between”

          “I was actually thinking medical and ammo in the pockets… you're right handed aren't you Charon?”

          “Yes”

          “So if I put the ammo in the left you could reach for it and still use your gun with the right?”

          “Yes”

          “Ammo in the left pockets, easiest to reach for our most used guns, sniper in the top because we'll most likely put our bags down to snipe and medical supplies in the right pockets”

          “Smart”

          “Thank you”

          “You've learned a lot, enough to start using your intuition. But this trip is going to be a lot harder than the last, even with the Brotherhood and new settlement's DC is dangerous”

          “I'll be OK so long as I've got you. Come on Charon look on the bright side, worst comes to worst we're both damn good at hand to hand and now you've taught me how to properly use a knife there's not much that can happen”

          “Don't jinx it”

          “I never took you for superstitious”

          “I don't believe in taking chances”


	14. Big Trouble In The Little Metro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon gets distracted and that's the worst thing he could have possibly done.

          If Charon and Poppy had never had anything in common they had this, they both HATED the metro. For two days they had been trumping on through the dark dripping tunnels, only seeing the sun in brief respites when they surfaced between them. On top of that they had been beset upon by almost everything.

          Radroaches didn't pose too much of a problem until they swarmed, especially when some of them were small enough and fast enough to make aiming hard. Charon had smashed them under his boot with an irritated growl but when he heard Poppy breathing heavily and whimpering he ran straight to her side. She was bitten up the legs and arms, tiny little pincer marks on any bare flesh they could find, even the holes in her leather trousers. She'd managed to squash a few under her boots or with the butt of her rifle but they just kept coming,

          “Charon there's so many, I've never seen so many” it took the two of them almost ten minutes until the last quick, little bug was dead,

          “Let me see” he held his hand out to take her arm so he could check the damage there before moving on to the rest, “you should use a stimpak”

          “For bug bites? No just get some rubbing alcohol on them” he shook his head but did as she asked,

          “This will hurt” he warned, the alcohol soaked rag poised over her arm. She didn't scream or even whine, just squirmed a little as he cleaned her up, his hands running over her as gently as he could.

          They moved deeper into the tunnels following the route they had picked out. Charon knew the layout of DC well enough to get about and Poppy was more than happy to follow him so he walked up front. This proved to be a mistake when she spotted something shiny and walked off. He could have killed her when he heard her scream and the animal like (but still chillingly human) hissing of ferals. It didn't take long to find her, surrounded as she was by the things and he saw something he hadn't seen since that first fight in the ring. She was burning with a passion and a determination that left him a little cowed. As a single feral broke from the group circling her and took a step closer she whirled round, knife in hand and almost cut it's arm down to the bone before punching it in the jaw and knocking it back. Each time one of the twisted, not quite human creatures took a single step closer she was on it, hatred and rage in her eyes. But the things had no qualms about stepping over the bodies of their peers or even clawing each other apart to get at her and they just kept coming. Charon blasted his way to her side, chest swelling at the heat in her eyes when she looked at him, he could feel adrenaline coursing through his veins just from that look.

_____________________________________________________________________

          Poppy was on autopilot, her mind distantly registering what was going on around her in a simply pleasant way. _‘oh, that horrendously decayed humanoid creature is trying to bite my face’_ she thought as her body acted on the threat before she was even part way through her observation. _‘Now one's going for my legs’_ she watched a boot crash down on it's head only partly aware it was hers. _‘That really big one isn't as badly damaged as the rest, I hope it's nicer too”_ Charon was already tearing through the ferals with his knife and something told her this was a good thing,

          “Are you alright?” He asked her breathing heavily,

          “Hummm? Yes I'm… no… wait… WHAT THE HELL WERE THOSE THINGS?” She finally came around and stared at the heap of crumpled, deformed bodies on the ground around her. Something was seeping from them, it was almost like blood but the smell was rancid and cloying, sticking to her nose and making her want to throw up,

          “Feral ghouls” he noted irritably as always,

          “Wait so they're like… your usual ghoul but… worse?”

          “They are what happens to a ghoul that loses too much of it's mind”

          “So you might end up like that one day?” He grunted and cocked his gun, clearly he wasn't happy about this line of conversion so Poppy just let him be, following along and looking about at her surroundings.

____________________________________________________________

          _‘Why would she ask that?_ ’ Charon was raging in his own head, _‘even a blind man can see how horrible ferals are and what having a sickening fate like that would feel like’_ He could easily hear her sure steps behind him, she was doing quite well really. Getting used to the underground was a bit like getting your sea legs, you couldn't do it until you were there and until you did you were likely to fall over or throw up.

_‘Is she completely stupid or does she not care how I feel?... Maybe that's how she already sees me, as halfway feral’_ the thought shook him. Someone who had never seen a feral before would surely connect the two and he was pretty god damn deformed, did she look at him like a feral that could talk?

          He was so distracted he didn't see the mine until too late, he managed to grab Poppy and throw her to the side as he jumped. The explosion left his ears ringing and pain shooting up his legs, a quick glance down told him this was worse case scenario. Both of his legs were crippled, the bones jutting out like splintered driftwood, they would need resetting and plenty of stimpaks applying before he could walk again. His head was still spinning too, he tried to remember if he had hit it but he couldn't think straight,

          “CHARON… OH GOD CHARON” someone was shouting at him, desperate, about to cry but it just wasn't sinking in. He could hear her and all the pain and need in her voice but something was blocking him from understanding, was this what going into shock felt like? If that was it he didn't have much time left, his organs would eventually shut down though no one knew how long that would take for a ghoul,

          “Looks like we caught a big one eh Munter” another voice, a male one this time and he waited for any more conversion to see if he could figure it out but so far it just wasn't getting through,

          “That one's half dead, God he looks it too, ghouls are fucking disgusting. This one's pretty though” he was aware of tugging at his armor and something, or more accurately a lot of something's being shoved down the front of his shirt,

          “Please use these, don't die Charon, I need you” someone whispered into his ear before being dragged away, but he was fading. Something in the back if his mind told him going to sleep wasn't good, but he just felt so god damned tired. His eyes drifted closed to the sounds of struggling and screams.

____________________________________________________________

          Fighting with everything she had Poppy threw herself around, stamping on feet and wrenching her arms free of strong grips, “CHARON… CHARON DON'T… NO OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES YOU DIPSHIT”

          “Why do you care about some shuffler?” One of the raiders asked before she pulled her arm free and elbowed him in the stomach, winding him quite badly before punching his friend in the nose. She ran back to Charon's side and started roughly slapping his face, she didn't care about the fucking contract or if he killed her, he just had to wake up. The ghouls lashless eyelids fluttered open a little but closed tight again too soon and Poppy was grabbed again and dragged away. The raiders had apparently called reinforcements and now her arms were being held by a raider almost as tall as Charon and a lot bigger built. She still kicked at him though, trying to weaken his legs so she could plant her weight on her own feet and throw him. It didn't work and her ankles were grabbed by two other leering raiders,

          “Boss is gonna love this one, he likes em with spark” one particularly ugly raider sneered, licking his lips and running a hand up her leg while the other one was firmly planted on her ankle,

          “Who says I'm gonna give her to the boss?”

          “You know how it works, whoever wins in a fight gets first pick of the loot, do you really wanna fight Big Red?” So the boss was called Big Red, it wasn't a name she had heard in her raider days so he was most likely quite young, the raider clans were surprisingly knowledgeable about each other,

         “Maybe I will Thorn, I'm bigger than him” this was the big brute who now had one hand wrapped around her wrists and the other around her waist while they carried her. Apparently he wanted to fight this Big Red for the chance to claim her. Their boss seemed pretty lenient, most would just kill anyone attempting to take the best loot for themselves (she wasn't big headed but she knew what was in their packs, she was definitely the best loot of this score). Her best bet here was to make sure this fight went ahead, buy herself some time and maybe figure out a way out,

          “Maybe I'll fight for myself” she said, taunting the big man carrying her, she stopped struggling so she could twist around to stare up at him as best she could,

          “Not gonna happen, you're gonna be mine little slut” she shuddered at the term, it was one she had always hated and had been called too many times,

          “So you want me then?”

          “What? You game? Been a long time since I've had a girl was willing” he was grinning at his mate while he said this,

          “Yea not surprised with that face” Thorn, one of the ones holding her legs said,

          “Fuck off, good enough to get this prime piece interested”

          “Yea that's if you don't get killed by Big Red” Thorn seemed determined to persuade his friend not to fight but it was having the opposite effect, the big idiot wanted to even more now and she hadn't for one second said she was interested. Men were too easy to play… although she shouldn't get too proud of herself, there was a lot left to do before she saw the end of this one way or another.

____________________________________________________________

          Charon didn't know what was dripping on him but it was cold, a little bit slimy and most likely disgusting. Anyway he didn't have time to get dripped on he had to figure out why his legs were hurting, something to do with a splinter? But it can't be that, he ate splinters for breakfast. If he could manage to open his eyes he could look and move away from the drip. He was a two hundred year old almost seven foot ghoul, he could manage to open his eyes. He did, _‘humm I see why I thought about splinters”_ now that was one mystery down and he was just going to ignore the fact that his legs were a ripped up mess of flesh and bone for now. _So, what happened?_ Well the remnants of a frag mine and the bone and dead body decorations were enough of a clue there. He'd stepped on a raiders frag mine in the metro, right mystery two down now onto three. Why was he in the metro in the first place and why were his legs hurting so much… oh yea, they got blown up. OK the metro, Poppy had wanted to speak to the Brotherhood… wait where was Poppy. Raiders… Poppy was not here and they were in raider territory… fuck. The idea of raiders having her hurt more than the indescribably excruciating pain of his legs, one that penetrated his mind every second and made it hard to think. He needed to do something and quick but his legs were carrying him nowhere and his pack was gone. He was alone and stranded with his employer, the woman he loved in the clutches of filthy sick perverted raiders.

          Trying as hard as he could to get up he couldn't help screaming out in agony as his legs shifted just a little. Fuck fuck fuck fuck… there was something hurting his chest too, had one of them shot him? Not that kind of pain, actually not really pain at all, more discomfort. He reached in and pulled out bandages wrapped hastily around at least six stimpaks, the girl was a genius. She had a few seconds to give him something so he could save her and she gave him exactly what he needed.

           Even with stimpaks, fixing his legs was still going to be one of the most horrifying experiences of his life. Pulling the bandages out first and unrolling them he neatly set up the stimpaks, there were in fact seven and he was pretty impressed Poppy had managed to get that many down there. He undid a belt to hold in his mouth, the last thing you need with two broken legs is to also bite off your tongue, though he probably wouldn't be all that much quieter if he did.

          OK, now the hard part, he took his right leg into both hands, the bone was sticking directly out if the top of his shin, if he put enough pressure on it before bandaging it the stimpak would do the rest. It might never heal properly but he didn't care, he'd happily spend the rest of his unnaturally long life in a wheelchair if it meant Poppy could be spared the hell she would have to endure with those raiders. Pain shot up and down his legs like electrified wires inserted directly into his bones. It hurt so bad he wasn't sure if he did in fact black out for a moment, he did throw up. A stimpak close to the broken skin meant it all started to knit together but the pain didn't fade, not entirely. The second leg was harder, it stuck out at an odd angle so he couldn't simply use the floor to flatten it out. He wriggled his way to a heavy crate and placed his leg against it. Every movement was agony, brain melting agony but he had no time.

          This one did make him black out, he was sure it was only for a second but he had no way of telling for sure. When he came to he vomited up the last if his stomach contents and counted down under his breath to distract from the pain as he injected the stimpaks magic. Tight bandages would help hold it all together while the bone and skin was weak. A splint would help too but he couldn't afford the cumbersome weight of wood strapped to him so he just made do with the bandages. After desperately gasping in lungfuls of the stale air to compose himself he set off. Each step was a fresh burst of hell, each time one of his feet touched the floor electricity flashed up his legs leaving burning pain in it's wake.

          He had to keep going, pain he could handle, pain helped hone the anger that always rushed through him. Pain was all he was right now. Pain that wanted to share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Back BABY! I've had a long hiatus on this and my other works but recently I've been feeling inspired so I'm gonna be updating again and not just this one but my other unfinished fanfictions as well.


	15. Separated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy and Charon were each left alone in horrible situations when raiders dragged her away and left him for dead. They both struggle to survive while Charon tries to find her.

          They had dragged her to a metro station with a big empty space in the centre and one room shacks set around the edge and up on the higher tiers, where busy pre-war people would have crossed over the top of the tracks, rushing on their commute. It was surprising how organised the place was despite the green mildew growing along the walls and the thick smell of blood and damp. An almost flat space had been created over the tracks by laying down boards across them. This area seemed to work as some sort of meeting space and, she guessed, fighting ring. It was hard to tell exactly how many people lived here, at least twenty which was pretty big for a raider holdout.

           She'd been shoved unceremoniously into a cage next to the body of some poor wastelander, his clothes tatty and ripped, a rancid hole where his guts should be suggesting someone had scooped them out. The thought made her sick, she had a feeling they'd do the same to her eventually, just out of a different hole. She had to get out of here.

          Thankfully her plan had worked so far, the big arsehole had left his little friend Thorn to watch her and made his way over to the boss. Big Red was a smug prick, he sat on a throne set above the ‘meeting space/fighting ring’ which was in actual fact a dining room chair with human bones attached to it along the wood. He sat there like he owned the world and to him he probably did, his world was this stinking subway tunnel and it was his. She had to admit that he was quite good looking as far as raiders went, a strong jaw and sharp nose that suited him. He looked like he might have had a bath in the last week and Poppy wondered if that was normal or she had just caught him at a good time.

          Fear hadn't exactly set in yet, right now all of this was rather surreal, like watching it happen to someone else. She knew full well what would happen and if she was lucky it would end in her being a slave again… it would be a much less pretty picture the other way. While the two men postured she watched emotionless, there was no point fighting against a steel cage, all she could do now was wait and hope an opening would present itself,

          “Munter’s gonna die for you bitch… I hope you're happy” Thorn hissed out between gritted teeth and spat at her feet. She simply looked at the globule, all phlegm and blood, then up at the ugly raider, a disinterested look of boredom on her face,

          “It's really all the same to me in the end, unless I escape” a bell marked the beginning before he had a chance to say anything more. The noise made Poppy shudder but she hid it and made sure to watch the fight. Munter, as she now knew her ‘suitor’ was called, started off pretty well. He was big and the boss wasn't, Munter easily got his leader pinned and his ugly friend cheered. Poppy was a seasoned fighter though, she could tell Big Red was playing with him by the way he moved, he must have had something up his sleeve to make him so confident.

          Then it happened, almost too quick for her to see the raider boss pulled a move she had never seen in real life. Back when Scar had been teaching her he'd given her a big book about fighting… pulger’s something. It had a lot of pictures of men in shorts holding up their fists. One section was on martial arts, some ‘big craze from the mysterious east’ as they had called it (clearly it had been old before the war, there wasn't one mention of communism in it). This move had been in that book, a powerful kick to the solar plexus that Big Red put all his body behind in a fluid motion. It was like a dance, a flurry of arms and legs in smooth motion until his opponent was flat on the ground whimpering for mercy. Big red bent over the much larger man,

          “you what? You give up?” The raider spoke up so that everyone in the dingy space could hear,

          “God knows what the boss’ll do now” she was getting running commentary throughout the whole thing from Thorn. The guy hadn't exactly remained loyal to his friend, he was laughing at this point,

          “Alright coward, now I get your prize” Big Red announced and she was dragged from the cage while the boss eyed her up, “and I know just what to do with it” Big red took her by the back of the neck, pinching hard enough to bruise, “alright boys gather round, yep just like that. Since Munter here lost I should kill him, but I won't, I'm gonna do worse. He's gonna watch while you all share his precious little wastelander”

          “What… NO!” Poppy screamed as she was launched forward into the waiting crowd. The fear definitely set in as hands grabbed at her armour, pulling her this way and that into leering faces and jutting bodies. Her chest piece came away in someone's hands, the straps ripping painfully against her shoulders and she fell into open arms. The arms belonged to a stinking man with hair sticking out where hair shouldn't be and he took the opportunity to grab her face. Squeezing her cheeks so she was forced to pout he forced his lips into hers and increased the pressure until she let his tongue invade her mouth. He tasted of rot and stale cigarettes and she wanted to gag. All the while hands she couldn't see pulled and groped at her body, a groin rubbing against her arse.

          As soon as the kisser let go of her she reached into her boot, hoping her last line of defence hadn't been moved without her noticing. It hadn't and she gripped onto the handle of the combat knife like a wish from it could make this all go away. When another crotch was shoved against her back she reacted almost instantly, throwing her head back, headbutting the man and jamming the knife into his throat. It wasn't like you'd imagine, like slipping through butter, stabbing someone is a lot harder than that and it took considerable force to push it through the skin and muscle to pierce the jugular. A rough wiggle was enough to pull it out, spraying her and those too close in blood, thick and hot and sickening. More than a few of the raiders backed away and Poppy lunged for the bravest, wrapping an arm around his neck and twisting to drive the blade through his gut. He'd take a long time to die like that but wouldn't be a threat any more. A third was killed by a kick to the gut bringing his head down onto the waiting knife, it went through his eye, the slick remnants of the eyeball coming free with the knife but he was already dead,

          “ENOUGH!” Came a shout from the dais above them. Everyone stopped, even Poppy, panting and holding the knife in front of her like a shield and twisting and turning in an attempt to see everyone at once, “Someone get that knife off her” he sounded exasperated. Three of them ran at her, all three died in moments, and she watched the crowd for more wannabe corpses, “Good god just hit her on the head, surely one of you has some sort of blunt instrument” a murmur among the crowd, then a sharp pain in the back of the skull sent her sprawling on the ground, head spinning. Another and she was unconscious.

\--------------------------

          The pain was easing enough for Charon to think a little straighter and now he was actually looking for Poppy rather than just walking in a straight line and hoping not to throw up again. He still felt nauseated, but now could ignore it and keep going. Each step was a struggle but he still went on, dragging himself through tunnel upon tunnel. He would have given up and turned back long ago were it not for the occasional grotesque still life marking the place as raider territory. How big was this gang? They seemed to control half the metro. Finally he came across two raiders talking amongst themselves,

          “Yea and she pulled out his eyeball” said one, who Charon started thinking of as dead meat number one,

          “What with her bare hands?’ Said dead meat number two,

          “No with a knife you idiot”

          “Right of course… how'd she get a knife?” They seemed to be carrying something, lugging it with little care,

          “It was in her boot all along, the idiots didn't think to check” were they talking about Poppy? He'd taught her to always keep a knife in her boot just in case,

          “What happened then?”

          “So boss started shouting and someone knocked her out with a baseball bat, took two hits, tough girl that one”

          “And pretty, that red hair! I’d’ve liked to see them tits” they were definitely talking about Poppy, these pricks would lose their eyes if they'd so much as looked at her,

          “Didn't get that far, now boss’s got her locked up in his room, you know how he likes a fighter, likes to tame em ya’ see” they threw a body on a pile, a pile of six with deadly knife wounds and he felt his chest swell with pride, one of them did in fact have an empty eye socket, the hole filling with brain matter seeping through the knife mark in the back, straight to the grey matter behind it. Shame, instant death was too good for these cocksuckers. Dead meat number one and his friend number two were heading off down the tunnel again, Charon had to fight the urge to rip them apart with his bare hands so he could follow.

\--------------------------

           She came to on a cold concrete floor littered with the rotten debris of everyday pre-war life. For a while she didn't even bother to look around her, it was clear she was in a locked room, her hands tied behind her back, stripped naked and she just wanted this brief moment of peace to last a little longer. It didn't last long enough. A hand roughly tangled in her shoulder length hair and tugged her upright, not giving her time to use her bound hands to help so that all her weight was pulled up by her scalp. Poppy bit her lip to stop from screaming out in pain as it felt like her hair was about to rip from her head. Eventually she caught her balance and stood on wobbly legs, from the throbbing in her head and the nausea she most likely had a concussion,

          “So, the bitch is awake. Think you're too good for my boys?” Big Red sneered at her, she stared him right in the eyes, defiant, “I like taking snobby little sluts like you and breaking them in… you'll know where you stand soon enough”

          “You think this is a fair fight?” she looked around the room finally, hoping to see some form of weapon or something she could use to break the rope. There was nothing useful but a few things did jump out at her, like the filthy Queen sized bed, two regular mattresses on top of the frame coated in what looked like blood. A large table stood in the centre of the room, empty bottles all over the surface suggested the raider liked to entertain his ‘boys’. She hoped she wouldn't be tonight's show,

          “This is nothing like a fair fight little girl, this is about me getting what I want” he pushed his face into hers as he said this, until he was close enough that she could smell his breath. Out of nowhere he slapped her, a swift and hard backhand that she hadn't seen coming and it knocked her to the floor where she stayed in the hopes he might just give up. A tentative tongue found that he had split her lip, the coppery tang of blood filling her mouth,

          “You won't get chance big guy, if I wasn't tied up I could beat you to a pulp” it was taunting and probably false, she had never seen anyone with moves like him and didn't know how she would defend against them, tied hands or not,

          “I guess I'll never know, since I'm not untying you” a boot to her back sent her sprawling across the floor again, blood spitting from her mouth across the dusty ground. Again his hand wound around her hair and he pulled, “up you get, got a lot more planned for you”

          “Fuck you”

          “Oh… you will” he slammed her face down against the hard tabletop, Poppy could have sworn she heard her skull crack but all the pain she could feel was radiating from where her stomach had collided hard against the edge. Trying so hard not to think about his body pressing against her arse she let her mind wander, or more forced it to wander. As he roughly groped at her hips and spine she couldn't help thinking of the way Charon had touched her, gently running his hands along her back, holding her as she cried. Her ghoul had been so soft, running his fingers through her hair, his broken hands soothing her to sleep and she ached for him right then.

          The raider ground his hard member into her and she tried not to whimper as the rough fabric of his jeans rubbed her raw. Once again he grabbed her hair and slammed her face down hard, a sharp familiar pain told Poppy her nose had broken and when he eased off her and spun her around she could taste even more blood, “God you're a mess, bet you don't feel so high and mighty now hu?”

          She would have answered if she wasn't concentrating so hard on not crying from the pain. She had been through worse, she wouldn't let this prick see her cry. Big Red leaned over and forced her down onto her back, the arms tied behind her pulling at their sockets. The sick bastard smiled at her, something as far from friendly as you could get as he pawed at her breasts. Then came the nails, grubby and broken they cut into the flesh of her breasts, leaving tears in her skin a feral would be proud of. Though she was strong she couldn't help but make a noise as his jagged nails left red welts in her skin. Her pain came out in something high pitched between a groan and a scream and the bastard revealed in it, finally taking his opportunity to part her thighs with his knee. A hand ran along her inner thigh then she felt that same sting of nails digging into her. She tried to struggle free but his other hand quickly darted upon her throat to pin down her wriggling body, “You're going nowhere princess, may as well relax and enjoy yourself” as three fingers pushed inside her, stretching her insides until they burned she let tears fall and hated herself all the more for giving into them.


	16. Reunited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning, this chapter contains sexual assault... because apparently I'm incapable of writing a doc without just a little bit in it.
> 
> Charon finds Poppy and everything gets... strange.

          Charon held the two men by their faces, pushing his fingers through their eye sockets and feeling a sick delight at the feeling of oozing and squishing. They couldn't scream because he had his hands over their mouths and it wasn't long before he heard a crack from the pressure and the first one stopped moving. Annoyingly dead meat two was the first to die. He increased the pressure on the other raider and he followed behind his ‘colleague’.

          They weren't needed anymore, they had talked enough he knew exactly where the bosses room was and he could hear the noise of the camp now. Ironically they had had the same idea as him, to break Poppy out of the boss's place, only they wouldn't do it for her sake, they wanted her for themselves. Granted he wanted that too but he wanted her safe and happy much more than anything else in the world. God he was getting soppy, he'd have to tell her how he felt someday and he made up his mind he would do it soon, once he got her out of this mess.

          The camp was big and a lot more permanent than he had expected. He crouched down and crept around the edge, Big Red (the soon to be dead leader) had a room on the top floor which would give him plenty of opportunity to survey the place. Also a lot of opportunity to be spotted but he was too confident in his stealth skills to worry about that too much. Lock picking however, his big, half dead hands just didn't have the delicacy and dexterity for it. Raiders were stupid though, this guy would have hidden the key nearby. A lucky guess found it on the third try in a makeshift kitchen to the right of the arsehole’s room. It wasn't hard after that, all Charon had to do was take one look at the room and he blanked out with rage.

          The sight of Poppy, his Poppy stretched out backwards over a table, her face bloody and already bruising while some raider had one hand between her legs and the other around her throat and he lost it. The last thing he was aware of doing was locking the door behind him.

          He came around again with a crumpled mess of guts and blood in his hands, he had ripped straight through the raider's stomach. He would have died in abject horror and agony, watching a zombie rip out his insides. It wasn't nearly enough suffering.

\-------------------------

          “CHARON… CHARON STOP!” it wasn't sympathy for the sick rapist that had her shouting and trying to lift herself up on weak, bound together arms. No it wasn't pity but fear, the look in her ghouls eye's filled her with horror, he was part monster in that moment and she was terrified she had lost him. It was like he had gone feral when she watched the hate and sheer determination for one thing… to kill. And he used torn and broken fingernails and just simple brute strength to rip into the raider's stomach and tear at his blood soaked entrails,

          “CHARON PLEASE I LOVE YOU… I love you… I can't lose you” he continued to paw at Big Red's intestines, the offal leaking between his fingers in a coating of slime and Poppy's voice became weaker, “Charon please help me”

          “Poppy?” It was as though he was waking from a deep sleep, seeing her for the first time. Bleary eyes looked at her, unsure of what he was seeing,

           “Yes… oh god Charon yes… it's me… help, help me” he stood, covered almost up to the elbow in things she didn't want to think about. He untied her and she collapsed into his arms, wrapping his entire body around her he lowered them to the floor.

\-------------------------

          “We need stimpaks” he wasn't at all distracted by the fact that she was naked and curled up on his crossed legs. Poppy needed help and he was entirely blinded to everything else. Gently, softly he ran his ruined fingers up and down her back, trying to calm her heavy breathing, not even entirely aware that he was smearing blood over her tanned skin,

          “No, please just hold me” he grunted an affirmative and pulled her body closer. She seemed so small then, when her tall frame was curled in on itself and he wished he hadn't been distracted being angry with her, none of this would have happened if he hadn't given in to that,

          “Poppy” big brown eyes edged with unshed tears looked up at him and his chest clenched painfully around his heart, “you are bleeding, you need to let me fix that and find you some clothes”

          “Yes” she nodded distantly and allowed him to untangle himself from her, first he took a ratty blanket from the big bed and wrapped it around her shoulders, then started searching the room for anything useful.

           He found what he was looking for in a battered old locker just across from the end of the bed. The inside was lined with weapons, his trusty combat shotgun wasn't there but he could use anything and he'd need to to fight their way out of here. A large medkit sat on the top shelf, white and clean it seemed very out of place in the filthy raider hole, it didn't matter, it was still exactly what he needed,

          “Would you like to clean yourself up Poppy?” He had used her name more in the last five minutes than he had the whole time he knew her. In the state she was in she didn't react unless he made it clear it was her he was talking to,

           “Um… can… can you help, I'm all… shakey” she unwrapped a hand from the blanket and held it up to prove her point, it was shaking considerably. He didn't exactly want her injecting herself in this state, then again he didn't really want to touch her so intimately in this situation. Her need outweighed his discomfort though, as it probably always would,

           “Of course, you will have to lay down… on the bed” she simply nodded and lay down and his chest heaved as he lifted the blanket and ran a vodka soaked cloth over her perfect skin while she lay on the filthy bed of a dead raider. The idea that this might be the only chance he ever got to touch her, that she might always associate him with this, made him feel far more sick than his pain had earlier.

          As he cleaned off the slowly congealing blood he could clearly see the damage done. Poppy's inner thighs were covered in what looked like claw marks, as where her breasts. Her nose was broken and her eyes were swelling and growing black. After he'd set her nose (a process that made him cringe at having to cause her more pain), injected her with the stimpaks, applied near the wounds, her skin was marred with new scars, angry red welts that would always remind him of his failure,

          “Is it ugly?” Her small voice asked, he looked at her with what he hoped didn't come across as pity,

           “Nothing on you could ever be ugly” she stared at him, not breaking eye contact the whole time she gathered the blanket around herself and pulled herself up to sit on the bed. For one single moment in time it was just the two of them, electricity flashing between them, eyes saying what they couldn't out loud.An angry knocking at the door made both of them jump, destroying the fragile connection between them,

           “I'll get you some clothes, going to have to fight our way out”

\-------------------------

          In an old, ragged dress shirt and nothing else Poppy was fighting for her freedom. The gun in her hands, a 10mm SMG, sprayed bullets at anything and everything eating through raiders like a swarm of metal bees. She felt the laugh curl from her belly and escape out of her lips. It wasn't a pleasant, cheerful sound, it was the deep cackling of someone losing their mind. A hand on her shoulder stopped her and she looked up into her friends milky eyes and stopped laughing.

          It was over and all that was left of the camp were corpses ready and waiting to be left to decay,

          “Found our bags” Charon told her, he didn't seem to be bothered by the madness in her eyes or the eerie laughter that had just peeled from her, “your… your clothes… did they do this?”

          She looked at the torn rags in his hands and nodded, “he threw me into the crowd first, they pulled at me, ripped my armour off… but I killed as many as I could”

          “I saw that… I'm impressed and very glad you listened to me about the knife in the boot”

           “It saved me… you saved me”

           “It's my job” her heart sank, he was right, it was his job and nothing more,

           “Let's get out of here” she led the way to the station exit, Charon behind with a bag in each hand and his shotgun back in it's rightful place across his back.

\-------------------------

          Flames danced in front of her eyes, Poppy wondered if she'd go blind if she stared at it too long. It was a comforting thought, never having to see the horrors of this wasteland. Then again every time she closed her eyes she saw the leering faces of the raiders or the furious face of Big Red. Maybe if she did go blind that would be all she would ever see, the haunting images in her mind's eye.

          Charon was sat to her side, a respectable distance away, straight backed and uncomfortable,

          “Do you remember” she asked him,

          “Remember what?”

          “Killing him, it seemed like you weren't there or something”

          “No, I don't”

          “Oh… do you remember what I said afterwards?”

          “You asked for help, that's all I remember after coming through the door and seeing… you… like that”

          “Right, that's what I meant… asking for help” she wasn't sure what would have been easier, if he remembered he would just reject her and that would be that but… now she just had to pine over him. She meant it, when she said she loved him, even if she hadn't known until then when those words slipped out she realised the truth of them. She loved him and didn't know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sooo sorry... they will do the do eventually I just love my mutual pining a bit too much.


	17. A Few More Drinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy needs to unwind but picks the wrong old guy to Do it with.

          The vast grey metal monstrosity of Rivet City loomed over them as the pair walked through the rubble towards it. Poppy had been quiet, Charon understood why but he really wished he could say some magic word to make it all better, a stimpak for the mind,

           “You will be safe here” was what he said instead, she just nodded not even looking up at him. He wished she would look around her, this close to the riverbank things had started growing and she would be fascinated by the small patches of green if she felt like herself. The access bridge to the hulking metal ship had not changed, neither had Harkness who barked at them through the tannoy,

          “What is your business in Rivet City?” Charon knew the Synth guard couldn't see them properly so wouldn't necessarily know it was him but god did he owe Charon a favour.

____________________

           “ _What even is a synth?” Charon asked the kid, who looked at him like he had asked a really fascinating question. Daniel could be a bit patronising sometimes, the bodyguard hoped he would grow out of that,_

_“I suppose the word itself is short for synthetic humanoid. It's an android, like a robot that can perfectly mimic human life which really does open up a very important Ethical question. If we can make people does that mean they belong to us?”_

_“What do you think?”_

_“I think if something is capable of asking that question then it is too self aware to be kept like a pet or a tool. As far as I'm concerned it's slavery no matter how the slave is made”_

_“So we have to save him, whoever he is?” Charon didn't sound enthused, he rarely did though,_

_“Yup… Pinkerton is our best bet” Pinkerton was as narcissistic and self assured as it was possible to be. Honestly he saw in the old man a little bit of what the kid could have been if he hadn't had such crippling confidence issues when Charon first met him. He was glad Daniel hadn't turned out that way. He was all the more glad Daniel saw Pinkerton for what he was, a puffed up arsehole full of hot air, genius or not._

_With a name, a face and a code they headed back to the ship to find Harkness. It wasn't easy to get the head of security alone, there was always someone about. In the end Charon had used his none existent acting skills to convince him of an emergency and brought him to the flight deck. Once the security guard was aware of what he was the conversion turned harrowing. Charon didn't want to be present for the heart to heart between the newly discovered synth and the hero of the wastes but here he was. The whole thing reminded him a bit too much of his own story, an abnormal and inescapable slavery._

_But Harkness had escaped hadn't he? Well for this long at least and the ghoul intend to keep him that way as much for his own dwindling hope as for the kids sake. They had to kill Zimmer and Armitage, the scientist and synth bodyguard sent to find Harkness. It had been a close fight between the two evenly matched androids until Charon stepped in and tipped the scales in the head of security’s favor. Harkness was free and Daniel and his bodyguard had been given very subtle thanks._

____________________

          “Can I get in… I need… I need a drink” Poppy wasn't entirely sure what else to say, it was the truth, she just wanted to get rat arsed, 

          “You can get a drink anywhere, we don't need anymore drunks” Harkness said, scorn clear in his tone now that he thought Poppy was just another alcoholic looking for safety, she could feel anger bubbling up at the assumption,

          “HEY, I’M NOT A DRUNK I'LL HAVE KNOW I ALMOST GO-” a gentle touch to her shoulder interrupted her before she gave the guard too much information,

           “Let me try” Charon said to her, she nodded, waved him towards the speaker and watched as he spoke into it in a hushed tone “I'm surprised no one's cottoned on to the fact that you haven't aged Harkness”

          “What! How did you…? Charon?” Poppy had no idea what her ghoul had been on about, but it worked, the bridge swung around and the previously surly guard greeted them with smiles, “good to see you! To answer your question I keep getting asked what my secret is, although it won't be long until I have to make myself scarce I think”

          “Good to see you Harkness”

          “Where the hell have you been man? After we heard about Daniel we expected to see you but you never turned up”

          “It's been a long few years”

          “Charon” Poppy spoke quietly but his attention seemed to immediately switch to her, he waved to the man and lead her inside and straight to the hotel like he knew the place well,

          “You should see the doctor” he advised her and for all she knew he was leading them right there. She really didn't feel like explaining what had happened to anyone and, though her face was still bruised and sore she felt OK… physically anyway,

          “So should you” she replied, he grunted, in their time together Poppy was slowly working out the code for Charon's grunts, this one meant he didn't approve, “I saw your legs remember, you need an x-ray or something”

          “This doctor will know nothing about ghouls and I doubt he will have a working x-ray”

          “oh… right… I guess, just… the hotel then?” She felt zapped of all her usual confidence as she followed behind him her head bowed low. It was clear nothing had quite sunk in yet and if Poppy had her way it never would. Alcohol was the way forward. The ghoul hating Vera Weatherly was long gone from the hotel and Charon was thankful. Her well trained (in rudeness) robot was there though and he served them with a snobbish air that a robot should not be able to possess. An extortionate amount of caps later and they were in their shared room, Poppy clutching a bottle of whiskey,

          “Can I do anything?” “No, I just want to drink”

          “I don't trust this place enough to drink, I will remain sober"

          “Who says I wanted to share anyway?” She said this in such a downtrodden, disheartened way he couldn't help but deflate a little,

          “I'm sorry, I should not have assumed”

          “Relax Charon I'm joking” it did not sound like it, all humour has been zapped from her voice, “although I am quite happy to have the whole bottle to myself”

          “I do not think that is wise”

          “Not really aiming for wise tonight, in fact I think I could really do with a big portion of stupid” she took her first swig of many right from the bottle.

_________________________

          “Is there a bar on this stupid tub?”

          A bar sounded like a great idea, the booze in their room was gone, who knows where? A bar would have people in it, people that weren't the ghoul she couldn't stop thinking about. Maybe even someone she could persuade to take her home and have some not complicated or upsetting sex… that would be good,

          “Yes” Charon was not being fun, Poppy could think of a lot of ways to cheer him up but even with a thorough coating of alcohol she was aware they would all be stupid,

          “Then I'm going… you don't have to come”

          “Yes, I do”

          “You don't have to babysit me Charon”

          “I do not consider it babysitting, I consider it keeping you safe”

          “Fine, come then” she got to her wobbly feet and pretty much pranced out the door, ignoring her tall shadow.

___________________________

          Butch had been the bane of his existence at one time, the wannabe gangster, greaser, hairdresser, whatever he was, had followed him and Daniel around for almost a month. Right up until even the saviour of the wastes lost his patience and dumped him here on this tub.

          Now Charon was stood in a corner of the bar, far away from Poppy and watching the arsehole, who was literally the same age as her father, chat up his employer. The child-like old man (OK so he was maybe late forties if that) had been buying her drinks all night and now he was running a hand up and down Poppy's arm. He didn't seem to recognise Charon but Charon definitely recognized him and didn't like the way he was touching her. The ghoul would have stepped in long ago but Poppy was encouraging it and he didn't know which part was jealousy and which was protectiveness. She leaned a drunken head on the tunnel snakes shoulder and he put an arm around her waist. Charon had had enough and marched across the bar towards them,

          “Poppy are you alright?” He asked,

          “Yea… ‘m gud” she slurred and waved a dismissive hand in his direction,

          “Wait… do I know you?” Butch asked him, he chose to ignore the question,

          “You are drunk, I should take you back to the hotel room”

           “Woh woh ghoul, I'm not letting you just scoop up whatever drunk girl takes your fancy and drag her off with you” Butch actually impressed him a bit by standing up for his… whatever the hell Poppy was to him. Charon still ignored him though,

           “I's OK Charon, Butch here saaays h’ll take care o me”

          “I'm sure he would” Charon grumbled, envy coating his need to care for her,

          “I knew I know you… you we're friends with Daniel, never did figure out why he wanted to hang out with a ghoul so much but you must be pretty cool for him to drag you everywhere. Anyway, doesn't matter, Poppy here already expressed an interest in coming back with me so butt out”

          “I's OK Charon, I wnt this… I jus… I jus wanna forget” that stabbed him, cutting deep into his chest and causing it to tighten,

          “Do you know what it is she's trying to forget Butch?” Charon put as much venom into his words as he could muster, which was enough to drop a deathclaw. The aging tunnel snake looked scared, but as he always had done he rallied and picked fights he couldn't hope to win,

          “Does it matter?”

          “Yes, it does” here Charon leaned in close to Butch, close enough to talk in a hushed tone so no one else would overhear. The pathetic manchild being intimidated was just a bonus, “yesterday she was almost raped by a whole gang of raiders, do you really want to mess with her head after that?”

          “Oh shit man… god no… Poppy, do you trust this guy? I mean, he was always good to my best friend” Charon almost laughed at the idea of this guy thinking of Daniel as being his best friend, but really he just felt a bit bad for Butch,

          “Yeah! I trus Charon, course I do” she smiled up at him, eyes so lidded with drunkenness they were almost closed,

          “That's good enough for me… look after her big guy”

          “Big guy! I like it!” Poppy announced He smiled faintly at her, something he rarely felt inclined to do with anyone,

          “Come on Poppy, let's get you to bed” he put an arm under her own and hoisted her out of the bar stool as he had many times before but she was so drunk she couldn't really tell which way was up, “how much did you buy her?”

          “We shared a couple of bottles” Butch said defensively,

          “Of what?”

          “One bourbon, one vodka”

          “She already drank a bottle of whiskey before she came out, I'm surprised she doesn't have alcohol poisoning” he glared at Butch, “you're lucky, I've hurt bigger men for less but I know my priorities” he slid a hand under her knees and lifted her up, ready and willing to carry her all the way back to the hotel room. Her head fell onto his chest, eyes closed and she almost seemed to be sleeping as he carried her along the steel corridors.

          Laying her on the bed he covered her in blankets and made his way towards the table on the other side of the room, assuming she was asleep already. A small voice assured him she was not,

          “Charon… don't leave me… please” he sat down on the side of the bed, hoping his weight there would reassure her, “please, hold me”

          “I do not think that's such a good idea” he was only fighting this because she was drunk, horrendously so and probably didn't know what she was saying,

          “You did it before. Do you really hate me that much?”

         “I don't hate you, far from it” he gave in, nestling into her side and wrapping his arms around her. He felt her relax in his hold and before long she was asleep. It took him a lot longer to drift off, he was trying to figure out why she would think he hated her.

_________________________

          A loud knock at the door roused Poppy to a world of pain, her head felt like it had exploded in the night and had been superglued back together wrong. Still Charon's warm body and the presence of both their clothes reassured her she hadn't done anything too stupid. Knocking again, this time she was sure Charon should have woken up. She elbowed him in the ribs,

          “I'm awake, I'm just ignoring it”

          “Uggghh… Charon”

          “I will not answer the door for you just because you have a hangover”

          “What happened to following orders?”

          “Combat situations only remember”

          “Pleeeeeaaassee” her whiney tone hurt her own ears and she winced, “I don't know if I can walk”

          “If you promise never to make that noise again” she watched through bleary eyes as he got up and walked towards the door,

          “Wait! Did you sleep in your armour?” he was still wearing his full set of leather armour,

           “Yes” It was Butch at the door, Charon pinched the bridge of his nose and grumbled to himself,

          “Um… hi, I just wanted to apologize to Poppy for last night” the bodyguard wondered what part of last night? Getting her so drunk? Trying to sleep with a girl about half his age or maybe he was regretting letting her go home with a ghoul in the end. It didn't matter, the answer was the same,

          “She is indisposed” the tunnel snake (such a stupid gang name) looked at him disgusted for a second, perhaps he thought he had his employer naked inside. That would be the day,

           “Charon… who is it?” Poppy's croaky voice sounded from under a pile of blankets inside. He looked behind to see she had made a nest on the bed,

          “Do you remember Butch?” He asked her, hoping to god she'd say no and he could send the annoying man away,

          “The guy from last night? Yea he seemed nice” Charon rolled his eyes, he felt envy rise like bile. Yea this guy had skin but that was all he had compared to Charon, what made him so special? “Let him in and pass me some water… so long as he doesn't mind me being hungover and still wearing last night's clothes”

          “You will behave” it was said as a command as the ghoul opened the door, suppressing a growl at this man being in his life again, let alone chasing after his… employer… she was still just his employer. He settled himself in for a long stand in the furthest corner of the room, just glaring at Butch until he went away, which couldn't come soon enough.

           “Poppy, I'm sorry last night ended the way it did” she eyed him suspiciously, the night before she hadn't exactly been in a good place and she could remember this guy feeding her booze,

          “How did you want it to end?” Eyes narrow she questioned him, she wasn't exactly hiding what she thought of him or what she guessed he had wanted from her,

          “For you to be in a position to take me up in my offer of drinks at my place. You were too drunk last night, if I knew you'd drank so much beforehand… “ he trailed off, the scoff from the tall dark corner told her he was… embellishing the truth,

           “I've had a long month, well more like two months now”

          “Charon told me what happened” at this her narrowed eyes turned towards her friend, lurking in the corner and not looking the slightest bit sheepish,

           “You told him? What did you tell this near stranger about me?” she asked Charon, he finally picked up on her anger and pushed himself off the wall looking worried for all of about a second. He didn't get the chance to speak though, Butch did,

           “Oh big and ugly over there isn't a stranger, we go way back” the older man said, waving a hand dismissively,

           “What do you mean?”

           “His old ‘master’” he actually did bunny ear quotes in the air, Poppy hoped she didn't look as annoying when she did that, “and I were best friends”

           “What! Why didn't I know about this?” She was fuming now, especially since Charon had never even mentioned Butch,

          “Not sure Charon likes to talk about that kind of thing, always was a bit tight lipped” it felt to Poppy like the little man was trying to goad a reaction out of Charon, not a wise thing to do, “I did mention it last night but I guess you were too far gone by then”

           “So he doesn't know about that then?” She was talking directly to her bodyguard and all but ignoring the aged greaser,

           “No”

           “You told him about the raiders?”

           “Yes”

           “Why in the hell would you do that Charon?” She threw her hands in the air, sighing with exasperation, “look Butch, you seem like a nice enough guy but you stepped into a whole heap of complicated which was exactly the opposite of what I was looking for last night. Maybe you should just give me up as a lost cause”

           “A beautiful girl like you is never a lost cause doll, besides you're pretty interesting… I think I'll take my chances with complicated “ god this guy didn't take a hint,

          “Yea well you just added to the mess that is my life right now. I'm not looking to be wooed or whatever the hell it is you plan on doing”

          “Maybe we should just try drinking together again, somewhere more private” he glanced at the angry ghoul in the corner and thought better of looking in that direction, immediately turning back to her,

           “Daniel's my father” she just blurted it out, even though she wasn't sure she wanted that to be common knowledge yet and she was positive this guy was a massive gossip. The truth still sounded weird in her tongue, Butch was the only person she had told other than Gob and Nova,

          “Yea sure, even I'm not that bad at maths. He died, a long time ago”

          “No, he didn't… or, well he did just not as long ago as people think” her voice broke, the pounding hangover combined with the stress of the past month or so just getting to be too much. Charon sighed and pushed himself off the wall before he walked over to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder,

          “Do you believe her?” Butch asked the statuesque man stood behind her and she almost cringed at the cocky disbelief in his voice,

          “Yes. I saw it myself”

          “What if this is all just some scam, she just wants to get famous and she's using nosebleed to get there”

           “DO NOT CALL HIM THAT” the sudden outburst had Poppy jumping off the bed and reaching out a hand to try and stop Charon from beating the man. His eyes burned with a fiery hatred but he didn't move any closer to Butch, she guessed he wasn't going to hurt him. Still this was so unlike the stoic ghoul who would normally run into battle with an eerie calm she wondered why it had affected him so much, it was just a name.

_______________________________

          _Butch had joined their group a little over a week before Charon got suspicious. Daniel had spent most of the last week unusually quiet and it had started to worry the ghoul,_

_“Hey nosebleed, you gonna finish that?” The egotistical teenage greaser asked, pointing a fork at his employers tin of pork and beans,_

_“No, you have it Butch” the tin changed hands and the kid got up to leave their spot at the campfire. Wondering where and why Charon followed, Butch was useless out here and left alone he'd probably get kidnapped by raiders but he wasn't Charon's problem, Daniel was. The kid was sat on a rock far away enough from the fire to be shivering cold. He was crying in a way that made it obvious he didn't want to be, fighting against each sob and just making it worse,_

_“Daniel” Charon said, unsure what to add but feeling odd about the idea of staying hidden and watching the boy cry,_

_“Oh Charon… I'm… I'm sorry”_

_“Why?”_

_“Why am I sorry?” The ghoul nodded, this employer had always been a bit odd but this was new, apologizing for crying to someone like him? “I don't want you to think I'm pathetic”_

_“You have killed supermutants three times your size” Charon didn't understand how the kid could think he was pathetic. He'd been thrown out in the wasteland with no idea what it was like and just picked himself up and kept going,_

_“Yea, I have and I'm still scared of my childhood bully”_

_“He bullied you?”_

_“Yep… he seems to think it was no big deal but he made my life horrible. I'd have said ‘a living hell’ but now I've seen the pit”_

_“It is not… pathetic”_

_“Every time he calls me nosebleed it just feels like nothing's changed. I've been through so much and I've changed, got stronger, grown up I guess but Butch just see's me as… nosebleed. Maybe that's all I'll ever be”_

_Charon took a deep breath, preparing himself for an uncharacteristically long speech, “you have done so much since you bought my contract, helped so many people. You will go on to help more. In the time I've known you I have been surprised more often than ever before, you just keep on defying expectations. If you have outgrown that boy and his small minded world then I am proud of you” the kid just smiled up at him past the tears,_

_“Wow, thanks Charon. Maybe next time he calls me nosebleed I'll just punch him” he never did, Butch probably never knew just how much that name upset him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finally finished writing this so I'll be publishing the last chapters over the next couple of weeks once I get round to formatting them... enjoy!


	18. Apology Not Accepted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Butch tries to apologise, it doesn't go too well. The pair eventually leave rivet city to try and find answers.

          “I think you should leave Butch” Poppy's tone was demanding and it didn't leave any room to argue but Charon still glared at him, just a little extra incentive to get the fuck out of their room. He did leave and the ghoul felt his stiff muscles relax at the sound of the door locking. She turned to him and sighed, resigning herself to some sort of fate,

          “We need to talk” a brief gesture at one of the chairs sat by a table in the corner of the room was enough direction. He planted himself in it and Poppy joined him at the table, “I want to know exactly what made you tell that man about… what happened… or… more almost happened, with the raiders”

          “You were drunk, he wouldn't let you leave”

          “What do you mean wouldn't let me leave?”

          “He accused me of… I'm not sure what exactly but he wouldn't leave you in my care”

          “So he worried about me, a bit misplaced but still… it's the thought that counts” her eyes screwed up while she was thinking, it was distractingly adorable and Charon was finding it hard to concentrate on his telling off, “didn't he recognise you?”

          “All ghouls look the same to people like him, just ugly monsters”

          “Charon you're almost seven foot tall and built like a soldier, I may not know a lot of ghouls but I don't know any others that look like you” she smiled and blushed a little, the pink colouring her freckled cheeks, “and you aren't ugly”

           “That is a lie”

           “No, it's not. OK so you don't have great skin but your bone structure is glorious and your eyes are… well… em… they're nice”

          “Spend a lot of time looking at me do you?” He had no idea where in the hell that had come from, it was almost like flirting,

          “Oh… no I just… we're together a lot I… I notice these things” the way she stuttered and blushed all the deeper gave him a little flutter in his heart. It felt suspiciously like hope. The pair fell into a loaded and uncomfortable silence, all the while Charon tried to bite back the building optimism he felt.

          Eventually the room grew too heavy with tension and he asked the second most pressing question he was thinking (the first being how she felt about him, but there was no way he would ever ask that), “Did you want to sleep with him?”

          Poppy thought about this for a moment, the shape of her emotions writing themselves on her face as she framed an answer, “I… yes I did”

          “Why?”

          “I suppose because it was easy, simple and uncomplicated at least until I found out about him and Daniel being friends. This whole sex thing is easier without feelings”

           “I think life is” she smiled when he said this, a sort of wistful turn of the lips and not for the first time he wanted to know what she was thinking,

           “Have you ever been in love?”

           “I… think so” he answered her, unsure of what to say, he wanted to tell her right then and there, scream it from the rooftops maybe. But really, he was a coward despite the fact that he could charge head first into any danger he was scared to tell this woman, who was beautiful inside and out, just how he felt,

          “Apparently you'd know… people say that, they say when you are you just… know”

          “Then yes, I have been” _I am right now,_

          “Before the war?”

          “No”

          “Will you tell me about her?”

 _She's everything, she's smart and silly and braver than a tiger. She's tall and willowy but so strong and she can learn how to do anything. She could take on the world, have anything she wanted so why would she want him?_  “No… I'd rather not”

          “Oh… OK” they looked into each other's eyes for the longest time, like they could read the others thoughts and for a moment Charon almost felt like he could. She looked like an open book, all defences down and just for him, her spirit, fragile but tenacious just wanting to be wanted. Charon could feel the urge to kiss her, to tangle his ruined fingers in her hair and hold her to him, to answer her need with his own. He blinked and the spell was broken, the moment passed and he regretted not taking that leap.

___________________________

            It was a long week on the boat, recovering, until Charon finally allowed her to leave. Despite the two of them sharing a room and being stuck on a giant tin tub he had managed to successfully avoid her. Every time they were in the same room her ghoul made busywork to avoid looking at her or, god forbid, talking to her. Honestly that was fine, she'd spent the whole week in a state of alcoholism, teetering the balance between tipsy and out and out drunk.

          The night before the pair left she tried to find Butch. They'd talked more, reached some sort of fragile understanding, he was the closest thing she had made to a friend here. Unsurprisingly the aged greaser was in the bar,

           “Hey Butch” she flopped herself down on a seat at his table, preparing to tip the balance into drunkenness,

           “Poppy, what can the Butch man do for you?” he asked in his odd way, she'd taken a while to get used to his turn of phrase. Sometimes he'd talk like the near middle aged man he actually was then every now and then a flash of cocky teenager would peek through. It would have been endearing in someone her age but on him it was a little sad,

           “We're leaving tomorrow morning”

           “He talking to you again then?” She had told Butch about the awkwardness between her and Charon, he didn't understand it either,

           “No more than he has to. I just don't get it, he looked at me like… well like he was going to kiss me then just shut off”

          “Urgh, you didn't mention that before” Butch pulled a disgusted face at her, “can't imagine kissing a ghoul… yuck”

          “Stop it Butch” she hated it when he talked about Charon like that, honestly where the ghoul was concerned Butch could come off as a bit of a bully. Then in the same breath the middle aged man would be so sweet to her, “I wonder what his cock's like”

          “BUTCH!” she'd had just enough to drink to be scandalized by his comment rather than simply punching him in the face,

           “I'm pretty sure he'd show you if you asked nicely… you don't even have to do that” she felt her cheeks heat up and Butch finally cottoned on, his eyes going wide, “you want to don't you?”

           “Want to what?” Maybe the coy act would work on him where it hadn't on Nova. How had the woman known so long before Poppy realised herself?

           “Don't try that with me, I know just how innocent you are not”

          “What because you tried and failed to get into my pants I'm suddenly not innocent”

          “Only failed cos tall and ghoulish dragged you off” he gave her a cocky smirk and she had to admit the guy did have something about him, a cheeky, rakish charm. So yea, maybe she wouldn't have avoided his bed had she not ended up drunk enough to be carried home,

          “OK fine, I'm not innocent… what were we talking about again?”

          “Your future ghoul husband”

          “It's not like that, he'd never be interested even if I were”

          “Are you?” She didn't answer but had the good graces to look embarrassed,

          “Shit Poppy… what do you see there?”

          “He's the first person who's made me feel safe, who didn't want anything from me… it's not complicated with us… only it is and I keep forgetting. Butch I want rid of that damn contract, I want to know he's doing things because he wants to not because he has to”

          “How the hell are you gonna manage that?”

          “Not a clue”

          “You know his dick probably fell off a long time ago… just giving you fair warning in case you get to that point and he's like a doll”

          “Fuck off Butch, that's bullshit and you know it” it made her laugh though, almost snorting beer through her nose when he said it,

           “What are you suggesting? I don't swing that way baby… either way, guy or ghoul”

           “Yea well apparently I do… or just him, never really felt like this before”

________________________________

           “FUUUCCCK” Poppy yelled at the top of her lungs, beating a supermutant around the head with her rifle while it tried to grab at her. The great green thing had lost it's weapon, a very crude thing made out of an old floorboard and sharpened into a splintering point. It had hit her over the head with the damn thing and she'd managed to wrestle it off the hulking beast and throw it as far as she could. By now she was running out if energy, her limbs heavy from the exertion of fighting this and it's three already dead companions, “CHARON! LITTLE HELP PLEASE… I hate supermutants”

          “HERE!” despite still fighting his own foe, Charon threw his knife to the ground before her, a deft little flick with her foot and it's handle was resting in her palm. Using the rifle in her other hand to poke at the monster until it was suitably distracted she plunged the long knife into it's neck.

          The ground under her feet shook when the thing fell, Charon too had killed his own and was watching her with a slight smile, “Wow Charon, you're smiling”

           “I smile… sometimes”

          “So it isn't some harbinger of doom? An omen of the second apocalypse?”

          “No. Where did you learn that?”

          “What? Oh the trick with the knife? One of my friends taught me… I say friend, I actually mean a girl I got to know a bit before… well before she was brutally murdered In the ring I suppose”

          “Oh… I'm sorry”

          “What were you smiling for anyway?” She could admit to fishing for compliments, she was big enough,

          “You were impressive” OK so not quite what she had been hoping for, but close enough, as close to a deceleration of her beauty as she was likely to get from the ghoul,

          “Thanks… we should go”

          “Are you sure you want to do this? The Brotherhood are not people you want to play around with”

          “I'm sure, even if you don't want to it's something I need to do for my own peace of mind, I really don't like thinking my Father could have done something like abandoning you to the Brotherhood”

          “What if he did? I don't think I want to know if it turns out I was just one of his troubles that he brushed off when he was done with it”

          “Was he really that kind of person?”

          “I don't think so, he could be ruthless though, I often saw him do things I would have never thought him capable of”

________________________________

            _Tenpenny tower loomed in the distance amongst a sea of desolate, rolling, brown hills. It was reminiscent of a mirage in the desert or the towers of Babel. It wasn't a welcome sight for Charon, he knew that inside all they would find were bigots and hate,_

_“What's wrong Charon?” The kid asked, he hadn't been out if the vault long, maybe about four months by now and he hadn't yet learned just how evil people could be. The sentimental idiot deep inside the ghoul didn't want him to find out, didn't want that knowledge to destroy the kid's innocence and hope like it had so many people,_

_“I don't like the look of that place, heard about it too”_

_“It looks lovely to me… bit of an odd place for it but I guess there must have been more around here back then”_

_“They won't let me in” he could see in the kids eye's that he wanted to explore, the tower was exactly the kind if thing that would drag his employer off his path and end in some quest to save everyone or some of that sort of rubbish,_

_“Don't be silly Charon, at least let's check it out. I promise I won't go in there without you”_

_“I don't like it”_

_“Duly noted and ignored… we'll check it out and decide from there. A compromise”_

_“Fine” Charon said more moody than usual. He was still getting used to the idea of compromise and so was the kid, he had a habit of steamrolling over other people and part of the only order he'd ever given was not letting him get away with that. It took a lot of getting used to, disagreeing with his employer, but when the kid got too excited he would just run into everything and ignore all warning. Charon made sure he at least listened now._

______________________________________

_Roy Phillips was possibly the most angry man or ghoul Charon had ever met, the guy seemed to be fueled by it in a much less controlled way than the bodyguard was. They had only known the other ghoul for a few seconds before he was ranting and raving, insulting them and telling them his plan for the mass slaughter of the tenpenny residents,_

_“You can't do that!” Daniel didn't really understand just how much a hate filled man would do to get his own way,_

_“You gonna stop me kid?” a rumbling growl escaped Charon at the implicit threat,_

_“Look, Roy, I want to help you. I get it, it isn't fair for people to treat other people like that but I can't be part of that plan. Let me go in and talk to them all, I'll see what I can do” so much for only taking a look then leaving._

_Charon did get let in, because Daniel almost threw a fit and had mentioned him being his bodyguard. It's probable they assumed Charon was a slave and relaxed a little more at that… pricks. The persuading didn't exactly go too well, no one but Herbert ‘Daring’ Dashwood had any time for ghouls, some outright hated them. Finally they got to Tenpenny himself,_

_“So, what did you wish to talk about young man?” The old lunatic was being polite to Daniel and pointedly ignoring Charon's presence,_

_“You should let the ghouls into the tower”_

_“HA! why in the name of all that is holy would I do that?”_

_“They have caps, just like everyone else. It's not fair to refuse them when they are willing to pay”_

_“That is not going to happen, it's bad enough that I let your seven foot monstrosity in here” Daniel was clenching his fists, would have probably gone for the guy if he wasn't holding an impressively overpowered sniper rifle, “You have looked at him right? It's sickening, rotting flesh like a zombie. I should have you thrown off this balcony just for suggesting I take those things in”_

_Charon was on full alert the second Tenpenny said this, he'd like to see him try, but the kid was already on it, “Are you threatening me?”_

_“Perhaps, would you like to find out?” In a flash of movement Daniel had grabbed the barrel of the gun and was wrestling it from the old man. He put up a damn good fight but before long Daniel had thrown the rifle to his trusted bodyguard and was holding Tenpenny over the marble rail of the balcony, the old man's arse sat just on the outside edge and his feet waving in the air._

_As he gripped the collar of Tenpenny's shirt Daniel had a look on his childish features that shocked Charon (and that wasn't easy). The kid looked at the pompous old twat with a burning hatred, his face set with determination,_

_“You don't get your way so you're threatening me?” Tenpenny said in an unexpected display of bravado for his current position,_

_“Oh Tenpenny you've got this all wrong, I'm going to kill you because you insulted my friend here and on top of that you insulted a whole group of people, many of which are also my friends. I waited for you to threaten me, it was a good excuse and now I have the whole conversion on tape… minus this bit obviously”_

_“On tape?”_

_“Yes, my Pipboy records onto holodisk, you didn't even notice when I turned it on. With you out of the way the residents should be more open to the idea of ghouls, especially when I put Mr Dashwood in charge”_

_“You… you wouldn't dare kill me. I'm the only person who can call off the talon company”_

_“The mercenaries? So you're the one who employed them, another reason to kill you. I doubt they can throw anything at me that my bodyguard and I can't handle, they haven't yet” with an evil grin Daniel let go, leaving Tenpenny to tumble to the cement floor below. Perhaps the kid wasn't as innocent as Charon had once thought._

___________________________________

          The citadel had once been an important building, the Pentagon. Charon had never been there pre war but was sure somewhere in that building someone had given the go ahead for him to be turned into this killing machine.

          Nowadays it was less intact and much less important but the people inside were no less horrible. Poppy looked determined, her full lips pulled tight and her eyes nearly on fire,

          “I need to talk to someone in charge” she snapped confidently at the men on the gate,

          “Yea right scavver” one answered, the one not in power armour and he looked her up and down. A raise of his eyebrow suggested he approved of the tight leather she was wearing though without an ounce of respect,

           “I'm not a scavver, I'm here to find out about my father”

          “Oh… was he a scavver, look sometimes people get hurt in the crossfire. You're cute enough though, I'm sure I can pass on a message and we can… work something out” he was staring straight at her chest, the outfit leaving little to the imagination with it's leather acting like a second skin,

           “Yea and I think I know what you have in mind. My dad was one of you, a Knight and there's a few… discrepancies with how he died. I want to know exactly what happened”

          “I'll believe you if you show me how much this means to you, drop the zombie and we'll head to a little spot round the corner where we won't be overheard and discuss just what you're willing to do to find out about dear old dad” Charon's blood started to boil, he had no idea what the arsehole soldier would think of the look on his face, if he even bothered to glance at him. This had stopped being flirting and was quickly heading towards extortion. He willed the guy to lay a hand on her so he could break it,

          “OK, I can have Charon keep watch” what? Now he was ready to kill, if this prick did so much as look at her in any way she didn't want him to he would snap his neck. Only, she'd just agreed, she'd wanted him to and Charon couldn't imagine her being coerced into this, maybe she liked the look of the guard. After all she had wanted to sleep with Butch until she found out who he was. Now Charon was burning with jealousy and self hate, of course it was only a matter of time before he had to stand by while she rutted mindlessly with some guy, she didn't feel the same way about him at the end of the day. She was bound to find someone eventually, but why did it have to be this turd?


	19. Infiltration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charon and Poppy figure out how to infiltrate the Brotherhood compound but as usual things don't go as planned.

            The soldier grinned at his friend who patted him on the back like he'd done something worth celebrating, they weren't even trying to be subtle. Following behind him, so he couldn't look at her arse or grab at  Poppy tailed him around the corner. Charon, a look akin to an acid rainstorm on his face, paced along a few steps behind her,

           “Wait here until I call for you” the ghoul pulled a disgusted face at her but he couldn't exactly do anything but follow her order even if it wasn't meant to be an order. The soldier stopped by a flat expanse of wall and turned to her looking cocky and predatory. She wondered how many other girls he'd used this bit on, it wouldn't make a good impression on the Brotherhood if she killed him right now but she was pretty tempted,

          “You made the right choice, I've got connections and I'll make sure to show you a good time” Poppy fought back the urge to shudder, or scream when he backed her into the wall and put his hands either side if her face. His arms were boxing her in and she had to consciously remind herself that Charon was not far away to stop the rising panic, “What's your name anyway doll?”

          “Poppy” she answered, she didn't ask him his, it wasn't like she needed to know it, this would be over soon enough. One hand reached down to paw at her breast, his head pushing hers to the side so his lips could meet her neck. She stiffened, it had been long enough and she didn't like this slimy prick touching her like this,

          “Charon” she called out, calm and collected, not giving the soldier the opportunity to think she was backing out. In a second the body was pulled away from hers and slammed against the wall, a ruined hand held firm against his throat though not enough to choke him yet,

          “Yes mistress” Charon said to her, a grin almost managing to form on his weathered face,

          “Don't call me that… hold on to him, I need to ask some questions”

          “With pleasure Poppy” she smiled at her ghoul and paced behind him, eyeing the man in his grasp,

          “So… how often does that ploy work for you?” She asked him placing a hand on her hip and looking at him with what she hoped was an air of calm disapproval,

          “You bitch, you can't do this! I'm a Brotherhood Knight”

          “So was my father, you haven't exactly given me any respect and right now I'm not the one with a strong hand around my neck” she almost shuddered deliciously at the thought but this knight probably wasn't having the same experience she would in his situation,

          “Tell your zombie to get his hands off me whore”

          “You don't get to make demands, I think you need to understand what's happening here. Charon, I don't think this guy likes you” on cue her ghoul pushed his face up close to the soldier and growled a low, deep noise from the chest. The knight looked like he was about to piss himself,

          “OK OK, call him off… fine I'll answer your questions” 

          “How many women have you taken advantage of like that?”

          “I… I don't know” he stuttered, Charon's face was still up close to his, lips pulled apart in an evil sneer. Poppy was glad she didn't see him like this often, “god… OK fine… about ten”

          “Charon I don't know if this guy deserves his balls” the ghoul grinned like the monster he was always called, it sent a shiver down her spine and she kinda liked it. Her bodyguard reached into his boot and pulled out a knife, holding it just over the man's crotch. He looked towards her for confirmation, she narrowed her eyes, “you know, I'm not a bad person, I just don't like pricks like you taking advantage of people. Not everyone is as nice as me, the next girl you try this on might not be so forgiving”

          “I said I'd answer your questions… please… please don't” the knight was all but crying now and she wondered how the hell he had managed to get his rank,

          “I won't, it's more… a warning. Next question, is there some back way or secret entrance to this place?”

          “Yes.. Yea there is”

          “And…?”

          “To the left of the northernmost point, that bit isn't used but there's a window that isn't boarded up. If you're careful you can pick your way through the rubble. You won't get very far once you get into the working citadel though”

          “That's for us to worry about. Ok Charon he can go” her ghoul gave her a look that almost made her laugh, it seemed he really really wanted to kill this guy. Or at least cut part of him off, she couldn't blame him but even Poppy wasn't blind to how much trouble they would be in if the Brotherhood found a dead knight just outside the citadel and he was last seen with a tall woman and an even taller ghoul, “let him go, he'll just go sniveling back to his friend”

          “Fine” Charon grunted and let go, the Knight falling to ground and then gathering himself up and running off faster than she would have expected with such wobbly legs,

          “Do you think he'll tell someone what we did?”

          “And admit he got tricked and intimidated by a girl and a ghoul, I doubt it”

          “Do you want to head in?”

          “It's late, we should make camp and do this in the morning”

          “Sure”

____________________________

           Poppy was staring into the fire like she was thinking hard. Charon watched the orange light dance off her eyes as they moved about frantically trying to follow individual flames as they reared up and died. He wondered if he had done something wrong, this woman was hard to read and she had acted like a warrior earlier. Now she had dropped her walls and looked broken, not sad, just carrying too much,

          “Charon” she said, almost too quiet to be heard, he just grunted acknowledgement, “I… I… I wanted to… I need to tell you something”

          “Yes?”

          “I…” her eyes lit, courage growing behind them. Then she sighed and deflated, “thank you for today and for letting the kid go”

          “It's fine” he wondered what she had wanted to say, after all that wasn't the shattering news he had expected from the way she geared up to it. Maybe she'd let him know what was bothering her soon enough.

________________________________

          Poppy was kept awake that night berating herself whilst Charon sat a small distance away, watching the dark waves with his back to the citadel. She wasn't sure what felt worse, that she almost told him how she felt or that she had wimped out at the last moment. They were so close to getting the answers they, or at least she, needed and she'd almost thrown love into the big heap of emotions tomorrow was going to bring.

          Snuggling further down into the warmth of her sleeping bag she closed her eyes and tried not to think. It didn't work and after a few moments she was listing all the reasons Charon could never love her. She was having a particularly self deprecating cyclical argument with herself and she was pretty sure she knew where that would end. A sleepless night and a lot of self loathing,

          “Charon?” She called out across their makeshift camp, in the dying light of the fire he turned his face towards her and she could really see the contrasting textures of his skin. It had never really scared or disgusted her, his being a ghoul, but now she found him fascinating. Almost as though his looks had grown to represent what he was inside, broken, ripped apart but underneath it all truly, beautifully, wonderful,

          “Poppy?”

          “Humm?”

          “You said my name, stared at me then drifted off, honestly it was a bit creepy”

          “Sorry Charon, will you come over here? I can't sleep and I always feel better with you around”

          “Of course” he stood in a swift and graceful motion, taking long strides to her and settling down at her side. Feeling brave Poppy rested her cheek against his knee. He tensed at first and she wondered if she had gone too far but then he pulled her closer, until her head was resting comfortably in his lap, his legs stretched out either side of her,

          “We should be careful out here, if the Brotherhood see you like this with a ghoul they will not be happy” he muttered under his breath to her, it was too late for warnings though, she just hummed to indicate she agreed before drifting off to sleep.

_____________________________

          The next morning the sun rose to find Charon, aching and tired still in the exact same position, the upper half of Poppy's body nestled into his lap. He wouldn't have moved if you paid him. Probably couldn't without embarrassing himself when he felt the warmth of her breath ghosting across the little bit of bare flesh where his T-shirt didn't quite meet his leather pants. Although that wasn't all, he'd have probably lowered her gently and gone to… ehem… take care of the problem if it weren't for how good just holding her felt. The warmth and weight of her, the subtle smell, the way her short hair fell around her face, the little grunts she made when she shifted just a little.

           He'd noticed and studied all of these things and more while he watched her, even down to the exact curl of her ear. But now it was morning, time for him to do two things he was loathe to do, wake her and find out why David abandoned him. It had to happen sooner or later, better to get this over with so they could figure out how to live a normal life. Or maybe figure out what a normal life was in this hell hole. She would have her answers and he would follow her to the ends of the earth no matter what, even if she found her perfect smoothskin guy. That wasn't exactly normal.

          He shifted uncomfortably, joints cracking from the slight movement and it was enough to make Poppy stir,

          “Morning” she muttered, bright eyes peering up at him and a smile forming on her lips,

          “Morning” he replied, smiling back at her despite himself,

          “Did you sit like that all night?”

          “I am used to staying in one place for a long time”

          “You shouldn't have to”

          “I didn't have to, I chose to” she moved off his lap, stretching so that her back clicked and letting out a moan bordering on the erotic. Charon dug around in his pack for water, trying to distract himself from the way her leathers had lifted, showing just a little of the tanned, rippling muscles of her stomach. He passed her some purified water and she glugged it down, a little drop running down her chin and making it's way to her… damnit Charon stop staring. He clearly still wasn't used to waking up next to a beautiful woman in the morning, not that he slept,

          “Charon I…” she stared at him, looking deep into his pale eyes, it felt like she were trying to see his soul and make a judgment based on what was there,

          “Yes?” He asked after she stared in silence just long enough to make him uncomfortable,

          “I'm scared”

          “Of what?”

          “That we'll find out the truth and it won't be nice. What if I find out my father wasn't the nice guy everyone thinks he was?”

          “One betrayal doesn't undo all of the good things he did. Anyway I doubt we'll get that far, we might just get gunned down in the hallway”

          “Thanks for the vote of confidence”

          “Always happy to help” he said sarcastically, she scoffed at him and the angry ghoul couldn't help but smile.

____________________________

          The information forcibly coerced from the Knight had been right so far, there was an unboarded window exactly where he said it would be. He had failed to mention that it was at least eight foot above the ground and surrounded by bricks made slippery by time and some sort of… moss? That was the only way Charon could describe it,

          “Could you get up there?” Poppy asked, turning her face towards him with a sceptical look,

          “Yes, though it won't be easy” “I wonder how they get in, the soldier's that is. I assume this is where they sneak out to buy booze and chat up girls on their down time” Charon laughed at this, for a girl locked up half her life she sure knew people well and she was one hundred percent right this time,

          “They have power armour… or… grappling hooks?”

          “Maybe a human pyramid?” She laughed at her own joke followed by an embarrassed blush. It was almost sickeningly cute, “OK, sorry, can't believe I just laughed at that… can you give me a boost?”

          Charon looked his employer up and down, he could easily lift her and had on a number of occasions (more times than not when she was too drunk to see) but he wasn't sure he was entirely comfortable with this plan,

          “I should go first”

          “And then what? I learn to fly?”

          “I… don't know. I'm not sure you should go in first”

         “What because you can't let harm come to me when you could have knowingly prevented it?”

          “This isn't about the contract”

          “Is it because you don't want your face so close to my arse?” she said with a laugh. He hadn't thought of that. The easiest way to get her through the window would be the time honoured practice of linking his hands together, her placing her foot in them and him lifting. That would leave his cheek all but pressed against the tight leather clad curve of her backside. It would undoubtedly be harder to climb the wall with an erection,

          “I'll find a ladder or boxes or… something” he scurried off, Charon could say he had never scurried in his life but he did then. If his face were not so torn and rotten he would have been blushing.

_______________________________

          Rubble and the ruined remnants of office furniture filled every room they passed, everything seeped in the reek of decay. At her side Charon was jumping at almost every shadow or darkened corner like something could jump out at them at any moment. Poppy had been a little disappointed when he refused to just boost her up to the window but the obvious embarrassment on his face had made her giggle, almost making up for it. Wooden crates, stacked up to create a sort of staircase had been the solution in the end and now they walked through broken, damp and darkened corridors that never seemed to end,

          “Did we get lost?” She whispered, earning a glare from her ghoul,

          “We haven't turned anywhere, there's no way and keep your voice down”

          “I whispered. Anyway it doesn't seem like there's any life for miles”

          “That is inevitably the point where we will turn a corner and be faced with twenty armed soldiers. I would bet on them being just through this door” he pulled it open to another dark room filled with hastily stacked furniture,

          “I'll take that bet” she said with a laugh, he simply grunted irritably at her.

          Charon wasn't far off though, a couple more rooms and they did find the inhabited part of the building. The corridors were clean, swept free of rubble and each space was filled with light. As far as Poppy could tell they had come out near the barracks, each time she peeked into a room it was packed full of bunkbeds. No one attacked them, in fact no one was around to notice them so they crouched low and attempted to sneak unseen for as far as they could.

          Heavy footsteps, in time with the metallic scrape and clank of power armour alerted her to someone behind them. Charon had already turned and raised his gun on none other than the Knight who had given them the tip, this time surrounded by his friends,

          “Well well, look who it is… you're gonna have a good time in lock up” the cocky little tit said, his voice coated with humour,

          “You set us up?”

          “Of course I set you up, what did you expect?”

          “Dunno, didn't exactly expect you to piss your pants from being intimidated by a girl” the right hook came out of nowhere, a metal covered fist cutting into her cheek. Charon pulled her behind him and glared down at the soldier, even in his power armour he wasn't as tall as the bodyguard and for a moment fear flashed in his eyes. Then the gun cocked and all hell broke loose. Before a power armoured fist was thrown Poppy was shoved unceremoniously around a corner where she crashed to the floor winded.

           In any other situation Charon would feel bad about that but she guessed he was too caught up in the fight. She could hear scuffling and muted cries of pain but so far no gunshots. It took too long to catch her breath, by the time she was ready to stand and charge in fist first a heavy hand had landed in her shoulder and she gazed up into a dark face (in more ways than one). The man wore a look of anger, pure and deep like he could gouge her eyes out any second,

          “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?” he yelled to the mess of scrapping bodies as he dragged Poppy around the corner by her arm. Tensing and catching his eye she willed Charon not to react to how this man was handling her, sure he was being rough, his large hand pulling her without thought for her comfort but he could be doing so much worse. Thankfully the ghoul just glared, apparently thinking the same thing,

           “Kells Sir, we caught them sneaking in Sir” the sniveling arsehole of a knight immediately got to grovelling and selling them out with no mention of him being in the wrong,

          “That's Captain Kells knight. Who are you?” He asked, turning his face towards the girl in his grasp without loosening his grip at all,

          “Poppy Sir and he isn't telling you the whole truth” The Captain raised an eyebrow at her skeptically,

          “And what is the whole truth?”

          “I approached the gate yesterday and asked if I could see someone about my father. He was a knight a long time ago and I wanted to know more about him. This man attempted to extort me, sexual favours in return for passing on a message to his ‘contacts’” Captain Kells had to hold back a laugh at her air bunnies, it seems he had the same opinion as her of how many contacts this knight had, “when we threatened him he told us how to get in through a secret passage”

          “Is this true knight?” Kells turned his enraged features towards the armour clad man,

          “You believe her over me?... Sir”

          “I did not mention who I believe, I simply asked a question”

          “She's lying wasteland scum sir”

          “I think Elder Ingram needs to be informed of this” Kells turned to face Poppy who had been watching the exchange with understanding. The Captain was clearly not an idiot, he had likely picked up, just like she had, on the fact that his knight hadn't actually denied the accusation, “will I have any problems in escorting you and your… friend… to the Elder?”

          “His name is Charon and no, we won't be any trouble since you're taking us exactly where we wanted to be” The dark skinned man before her sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He had to push his showy captains hat up to do so and it almost made her laugh,

          “Come along then, but know we do not usually allow his type into the citadel”

          “What? Bodyguard's?” she asked, a slight smirk playing on her lips,

          “You strike me as an intelligent woman so I'm sure you know exactly what I mean” she ignored this and eventually the captain led her and her ghoul down the freshly painted corridors. The Knight and his lackey's were led away separately, though she had no idea why. It was fine with her, she hoped she never set eyes on the arsehole again.

_________________________

          Back stiff with discomfort Charon sat beside his employer in a waiting room that somehow felt exactly like every other waiting room throughout time. It had been hours, hours of sitting stuck in the one place he hoped to be rid of. He could feel the stark whiteness and the silence of the place itching under his skin. Turning to look at Poppy he burned to talk to her, to do something he never imagined and beg on his knees he would ask her to run away with him. But the silence was deafening, it would swallow up his words like the sea. He could feel himself slipping back into dread, into the hate and nothingness of the contract where he could hide behind orders again,

          “Charon…” Poppy all but whispered. Before she could continue though a door cracked open and the bent old man leaving waved the two of them inside. An old woman sat in what looked like half robot, half wheelchair, so covered in dials and technology as it was. It clearly had a strong lightweight frame and somehow everything done to it looked elegant. Poppy's curiosity told her to go and take a closer look but she pushed it down, she needed this woman's help and being rude wasn't the way to get it.

          In the corner stood something that looked like power armour but without all the gleaming metal plates, more a skeleton of power armour than the suit itself. The woman, presumably Elder Ingram spotted her looking at it and smiled fondly,

          “You noticed my frame, it was a basic power armour frame but I modified it to be my legs. Tend to get stuck in this thing” she tapped her wheelchair, almost like patting a dog, “more often than not these days, lots of sitting about doing paperwork and less hands on. So, you made some very serious accusations and, while I'm aware of the Knight in questions… colourful past… I know nothing about you”

          “What do you need to know?” “Let's start with your name”

          “Poppy, this is Charon” the woman hadn't invited either of them to sit so Poppy was forced to stand uncomfortably in front of the desk while Ingram continued her questions,

          “Why were you so determined to break into the Citadel? You must have known doing that would have major consequences”

          “I did, but we just needed to ask some questions. I want to find out about my father”

          “And who was your father?”

         “He was a knight… here” she stepped forward and passed the heavily redacted letters to Ingram, “can you make sense of these?”

          “Of course, there's a serial number that would have been the Knight's identity in the system” she tapped at the keyboard of a pre war computer sat on her desk, “No… it can't be… do you know who your father was?”

          “Yes, most people know him as the lone wanderer or the vault dweller. I just need to know what happened after he switched on Project Purity”

          “I have to say I don't know myself but… in his memory you are free to ask the scribes and look at our databanks, maybe Lyon's kept something useful”

          “Oh god I hope so”

          “Now, these accusations…”


	20. The Questions You Are Asked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy gets the chance to look through the Brotherhood archives while a curious scribe questions Charon. Neither of them expected his reaction to those questions.

          Charon stood tall with pride now that Poppy and in extension he, had been given almost free reign of the Citadel. Casting his usual stoic glances at the people they passed in the corridors he recognized the faces of too many who had tried to torture him when Knight Allen wasn't looking. Tried, little did they know their small attempts at nastiness had been just a blip in a life of much crueler torture. In fact it made Charon laugh (internally) that the Brotherhood were even incompetent at being cruel to a ghoul like him. To his great surprise Elder Ingram had listened intently to Poppy's description of events. His girl… his employer… had been eloquent and dignified throughout even when she got to the part where the pissant had begged for his life and Charon had to stifle a smile at the memory. Apparently the Knight in question was known to be trouble and this was one in a long line of accusations of bullying and worse so naturally the Elder believed it all and shooed them out of her office.

          Poppy walked ahead, occasionally asking directions from soldiers who watched Charon with either disgust or caution. A few though cast jealous glances between him and his employer, they were wrong in their assumption but it still warmed his heart to think some people could imagine them together. Even after everything, he couldn't, so they clearly thought his love life was a lot better than it ever would be,

          “Hello? Scribe?” Poppy's voice pulled him out of those thoughts and he found them in a room full of large computers and robed people milling about. One figure pulled itself away from the group, a young woman with mousy hair pulled back in a sensible ponytail. Whoever this scribe was impressed Charon almost immediately when she looked him up and down without even a hint of disgust, just scientific curiosity,

          “Who are you?” The scribe asked,

          “I'm Poppy and this is Charon, we wanted to look at some of your records and Elder Ingram gave us permission”

          “The Elder? Really?”

          “Yes, there was a… misunderstanding and we managed to speak with her. I'm looking for information on my father and Project Purity”

          “Did your father work on the project?”

          “You could say that” he could tell from the slight tensing in her body that Poppy didn't enjoy telling people about Daniel. He wasn't sure why, maybe she didn't want to brag? Maybe it was simply the Brotherhood and their part in all this that made her so uneasy?

         “We have a lot of records on that, it would be easier if I knew something more specific”

         “The Lone Wanderer, Daniel Williams… did he die when he switched it on?”

         “Well yes, everyone knows that”

         “I'd like to look at everything surrounding his death and his care after the accident” the woman eyed the two of them suspiciously but sighed and acquiesced anyway,

          “I can get someone to bring you everything we have but… I wonder if I could ask you a favour” it was Charon and Poppy's turn to look suspicious,

           “You can ask” Poppy said cautiously, “I wonder if I could ask your ghoul some questions while one of the other scribes sorts through things for you” Charon felt the familiar tickle of rage towards the short woman before him, she hadn't even thought to ask HIM how he felt about being questioned,

          “You could start by asking him rather than me, I'm not his keeper”

          “Oh… I thought… you see when Charon was here with Knight Allen there was something about a contract… Knight Allen always refused to let me talk to him and said it's no good asking him because he can't do anything without permission” so this was a contract thing, not a ghoul thing, not that it was any better. The scribe must have noticed the miniscule change in his expression because she turned directly to him and said, “not that I'd be asking about that of course, just about being a ghoul and you're welcome to not answer any question”

           “Charon, is that OK with you?” He just looked towards his employer and nodded, it would be easier to just get this done and not have to deal with the girl again. Besides for once he found himself actually looking forward to talking to someone from the Brotherhood… odd.

_________________________________________

          A box filled with papers, holotapes and other miscellaneous things was dumped in front of her by an angry looking man,

          “Thank you” Poppy said to him, he just grunted and turned around to walk away (she was used to that, living with Charon the past few months was good for something), “wait… can I ask? Is this it?”

           “Yes”

           “Can I take any of this home with me?”

           “No”

          “Can I make copies?”

          “No”

          “OK fine, that's all I needed to know, thank you” another grunt and this time she let the surly man leave and got to work, first organizing the stuff into piles by type.

          Hours later and she had read through hundreds of sheets of paper, mostly medical notes she didn't even begin to understand. Nothing there. There were a few things in jars she didn't even want to guess at and a lock of her father's hair for some inexplicable reason. The holotapes seemed to mostly be marked with times and dates and she started listening through them, much to the annoyance of the people around her.

           Most were just interviews with his doctors and other people who came into contact with Daniel. Others were recordings of medical examinations on him, the doctors and what sounded like a Mr Handy explaining everything they were doing for the benefit of the holodisk.

          Two tapes stood out though, the dates and times on both had been blacked out and by them someone had written in messy scrawl “destroy, do not archive”. She thanked god for the Brotherhood's shoddy organisation skills and the fact that these two disks were forgotten and left to rot in the archives. Apparently writing praise filled obituaries to each and every soldier and the endless power struggles were far more important than actually dealing with something important, like hiding evidence.

          With a quick look around her she pocketed them both when she realised no one was paying her the slightest bit of attention. It's unlikely they would be missed, chances are no one knew they were there since they shouldn't have been anyway.

           Feeling comfortable to listen to the possibly incriminating holodisks at her pleasure she got up and set off to find Charon, he'd been gone forever.

_________________________________

          The room Charon was led into was similar to all the rest he had seen on the few brief visits he'd had to the Citadel. Bare whitewashed walls that echoed every sound with an empty metal table in the center and uncomfortable metal chairs that scraped across the concrete floor like nails on a chalkboard. He was feeling a lot less confident now he had left Poppy behind, she was only a room away and surrounded by trained soldiers so she would be safe but… would he?

          Right now she'd be deep in thought rifling through papers, face scrunched in concentration. She always glared at whatever she was doing when she found something difficult, like it had personally affronted her. The thought made Charon laugh which in turn made the poor scribe jump,

           “Sorry” he said, genuinely abashed at the sudden outburst, that girl in the other room made him do things he never thought he would, like laughing out loud at something in his head,

          “It's fine… em… it's Charon right?”

          “Yes”

          “I'm scribe Hamill, it's nice to finally get to talk to you” she sat for a moment waiting for him to reply but he'd painted the usual scowl back on his face and just nodded, “OK well, this… this whole asking you questions and stuff, it's not a Brotherhood project, it's something I've been doing myself and I don't exactly get to meet many ghouls”

          “At least you don't shoot at us for kicks”

          “I've never agreed with the way the Brotherhood treats conscious ghouls but I agree with other things so… I'm still here”

           “Ask your questions” he felt kinda bad for the woman, she was clearly very nervous around him but had the good graces to at least feel bad about it. He was regretting agreeing to this at all,

           “Oh… right… well… how long have you been a ghoul?”

           “Since a year after the bombs dropped”

           “So you're pre war?”

           “Yes”

           “And how did it happen?”

          He sighed, “the shelter wasn't good enough”

          “Could you elaborate?”

          “Military shelter, wasn't deep enough or airtight or something like that. A few months in people started getting sick, only a few of us weren't sick in the same way”

          “It was a slow process then?”

          “Yes”

          “And your memories. Do you remember everything or are some things harder to recall?”

          “I'd say both, there are still things from before the war I remember as clear as day but… others are gone entirely”

           “So, there's no improved memory skills that go along with being a ghoul? If you live for thousands of years you'd likely forget all but a few snippets” she seemed to have gained confidence as she jotted down his answers but now she seemed to musing aloud ignoring him almost entirely.

          The idea of forgetting everything made Charon's head spin, it wasn't something he'd thought of before but what if he did live long enough forget his friends, Daniel… even Poppy,

           “I'm done” he spat, pushing himself away from the table with white knuckles,

           “No please stay, I have more questions”

           “No!” He pulled the combat shotgun off his back and marched out of the room.

           Charon desperately needed to shoot something, preferably something with a lot of blood and a bit of fight in it. A deathclaw would be nice, failing that the shithead of a knight who had tried to take advantage of Poppy could do with a nice big hole in the head. He marched straight out the front gates, gun in hand looking for something to kill.

_____________________________________

            “Where's Charon?” Poppy asked the worried looking Scribe sat alone in a bare room shuffling through papers,

           “He left, I don't know where, marched out of the citadel apparently” she looked apologetic but wasn't exactly being any use,

           “What did you say to him?”

           “I… I don't know he just… shut down and marched out”

          “Yea he does that” Poppy sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose in exasperation, “I'll go look for him”

           “He took all of his stuff”

          “At least I don't have to carry it… silver lining I guess” sarcasm felt good, even if it did mean she was being passive aggressive Poppy didn't care.

          Outside the front gates of the Citadel there was little sign of a seven foot ghoul. Unsure what else to do she started pacing around the building, hoping to pick up on some sign of him around each and every corner. When she spotted a small splattering of blood on the trash covered ground she almost panicked and followed the trail to the torn and broken body of a mole rat. It had clearly been ripped through by buckshot, she knew by now he only used that when he was angry since it meant up close and maximum gore… fuck.

          More bodies led her like a gruesome breadcrumb trail, each one mangled and barely recognisable as the creature it was. At some point he switched to a knife and she could see the hulking remains of a small Yao-guai it's flesh torn apart in great slashes clearly made in rage. It pained her to think Charon had been holding this back, this rage that could rip apart something three times his size.

          Eventually she found him, stood atop a pile of rubble inside the torn down walls of a building. A protectron was trying to rip him apart with flailing arms while he held it back, taking a beating against both his outstretched arms. She could see the blood dripping off his armour and as panic rose she realised she couldn't tell if it was his.

          Poppy pulled out her rifle and lined her sights, her heart beat in her throat as she tried to fight for the calm needed to make a good shot. It took three well aimed bullets to bring the thing down and Poppy sighed in relief and took a single step closer to her friend. He wasn't stopping though, pulling the thing apart with his bare hands, ripping at it's metal innards until his knuckles bled,

          “Charon?” She piped up cautiously from her place about ten meters from him,

          “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” He yelled, enraged features snapping up to her, his burning eyes fixed on hers. In that moment he scared her,

          “Are you… are you hurt?”

          “No” he looked away, returning to the battered robot in front of him with less fervour than before,

          “What's wrong Charon?”

          “Nothing” he seemed to be deflating as the anger left him, sadness taking it's place and his shoulders slumping,

          “Charon, I know that's a lie”

          “I don't want to forget” it was a barely audible mutter, like he didn't really want to say it at all,

          “Forget what?”

          “Everything, if I live thousands of years I'll forget like I have my family. I'll forget Daniel… you. Poppy I don't want to forget you” for the first time she could hear the pain in his voice when it nearly broke as though the big strong man was on the verge of tears and for a moment she thought that maybe… maybe…

          “Charon… I... love you” his face snapped up, his eyes boring into her face as he traced it for any tell of a lie but Poppy knew there was nothing there. She faced him with open, honest features while he just stared at her for too long. A thousand emotions ran through her, wondering if she made a mistake or if he was about to lose it or run off, “I… I… if you don't…”

          Without a word the huge ghoul marched towards her, cutting her off as fear and nerves mixed into a churning cocktail within her. A strong rough hand grabbed her arm and pulled her in close, this was it, he'd kill her or… his lips crashed into hers, rough and thin and desperate. A whine escaped Poppy as she felt him pour every unsaid word and unmade gesture, every little urge to touch her or tell her how he felt into one deep passionate kiss.

          When he wrapped an arm around her, resting on the small of her back to pull her body close to his it almost felt like too much. Her head swam at the feeling of his hard muscles pressing into her like he couldn't get close enough. Poppy's hands finally decided to do something, acting in their own accord through the clouds in her head and they reached up for him, twisting her fingers in the short tufts of hair at the base of his neck and pulling lightly.

_______________________________

          Charon lifted her off the ground, her legs willingly lifting and wrapping around his waist, he could feel her warmth against him and basked in it. His hungry tongue ran along her soft lips and she willingly parted them for him. For a moment he thought he might die in the sweet taste of her and then her long legs wrapped around him and he thought maybe he already had.

          The half tumbledown wall shook slightly as he roughly slammed her into it, all thoughts of her safety burnt up in his overwhelming need for her. She groaned into his mouth when her back hit the brick and his brain stopped. It took every ounce of his legendary willpower to pull back and look at her, face flushed, eyes lidded with lust as they gazed up at him, “We can't do this here”

          “Charon Please” she whined and the breathy tone drove him wild. He had to grit his teeth together and let out a low growl to hold back

          “Not safe” he managed to push through a clenched jaw. He had to pull away before he gave in and took her right there in the open,

           “I don't care” she breathed and pulled him back with a deceptive strength. Charon felt his willpower melt at the touch of her fingertips holding onto his upper arms, digging into the scarred and torn flesh just enough to sting.

          He spun her around, pinning her against the wall on her front, hands running along her curves, wishing her clothes away, he wanted to touch every bit of her, every inch he had been denied for so long, he loved her, he loved her,

          “I love you” he whispered into her ear and felt her body shiver against him. The lovestruck ghoul didn’t even have an ounce of self control left as he tugged on the fabric of her pants and felt them pull down easily revealing a plump round backside.

           He pressed himself into her, feeling the soft flesh give way and his cock align in the space between her firm cheeks. Seconds later he had ripped off his own trousers and his shaft found her wetness, pushing into her and eliciting a cry from the beautiful woman under him. He could have sworn he blacked out after that first moment of bliss, that feeling of ecstasy as she opened and welcomed him in, the warmth and the tightness and all his emotions bubbling up and spilling into a swift and uncoordinated thrusting. Poppy was wriggling and moaning under him and he couldn’t hold back his mad and passionate pace, any other woman he would worry it would be too much but this girl, she wasn’t any other woman and the noises she was making were driving him on.

______________________________

          Poppy was overcome, too many feelings, too many emotions and sensations as he ghoul pinned her down and poured all his love and frustration into her roughly. It all built inside her, curling into a growing crescendo while her body just thrashed and moaned and she rode helplessly on the wave of it until suddenly she was filled with a shaking light, her legs growing weak, relying on him to keep her upright as she filled with nothing but pleasure, a thousand stars breaking and dying in her body.

          He let out a cry above her, himself shaking and they came crashing down, thankfully even in this moment Charon thought of her, making sure that she landed on top of him as he hit the floor and collapsed backwards. She twisted around, not caring about the rubble scraping her knees, until she was laid facing him, her arms bracing her either side of his face. For a moment neither of them was able to talk, just staring into each others eyes and panting,

          “We should go, it isn’t safe here” Charon broke the silence, always concerned, he was right but still,

          “God, even after that you’re worried about safety?”

          “We will find somewhere safe and… repeat that” he said, before thinking a little and adding “perhaps not so… intensely”

          “I liked the intense” Poppy declared, clambering off him and pulling her clothes back on,

          “Me too but I would like to… take my time with you” she blushed at this and glanced down at his… equipment, before he hastily redressed himself and stood, following her out of the debris of the ruined house,

          “Hey Charon”

          “Yes?”

          “I love you”

          “And I love you”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the penultimate chapter of this fic. One more to go before Poppy and Charon can get on with their lives. I think I'll miss them.


	21. The Answers You Seek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poppy finally gets her answers, but more importantly her and Charon finally get a chance to properly explore each other.

          The pair returned to Rivet City, neither being eager to go near the Brotherhood again for as long as they could help it. Both Poppy and Charon instinctively knew to try and keep their new found love secret in such a big city, at least for now. That didn’t entirely stop them from behaving like teenagers and passing glances and little, subtle smiles when they caught each other's eye.

          The second they got through the door of their room in the hotel all pretence slipped and Charon scooped Poppy up and dropped her on the bed in an impressive feat of strength given she was six foot and mostly muscle. He loomed over her and she felt a tingle in her core as he looked over her. Before she had a chance to sit up he pinned her to the bed and tugged on her pants, she quickly unbundled and unzipped them worried he would just rip them off if she didn't.

          Without waiting she removed her armour while he did the same and she slipped off her top, the cold air against her skin heavenly in the heat between them. He ran rough hands along bare flesh, the sensation leaving goosebumps on her flesh and pulling a sigh from her lips,

____________________________________

          “I love you” he growled, his hand running along her thigh and calf before grasping an ankle and bringing it to his lips. He marvelled at the feel of her silky skin, the stretch of her muscles, her flexibility. He pictured her as a warrior, covered in wode, striding into battle and turned into a shuddering gasping mess under his touch. His kisses and light nips marked her skin moving up the inside of her leg until he paused at the nape to pull in a deep breath laden with her scent, warm and wet and so womanly.

          Dipping his head down he allowed himself a first tentative taste of her, delighting in the shiver it sent through her. Emboldened by that reaction he dared to circle his tongue around her clit and was rewarded with a moan and her long legs tightening around his head.

_______________________________________

          Poppy loved the way her legs looked draped over her ghouls shoulders. She loved the way he was so delicate and tentative at first but grew bolder with each noise or subtle movement she made. She loved the fact that his free hand ran over her body while his fingers slipped inside her. She almost lost her mind when he found that spot inside that was hardwired into her. After she moaned out at that he had tweaked her nipple and carried on thrusting his thick fingers inside her while his tongue moved circles around her clit.

          It was almost too much sensation at once, her muscles started to tighten around his fingers and he stopped. That got a disappointed groan out of her, despite her head being elsewhere, and a throaty chuckle from him. He laid his body over her and brought his mouth to her lips, she could taste herself there and the thought felt so filthy.

           Poppy reached for his t-shirt, tucking her graceful fingers underneath, she wanted to touch him. However the second she made to lift up his top the mood changed. It was like the heat between them had brewed up a storm and lightning struck. Charon jumped up and all but ran the the other end of the room,

          “Charon what's wrong?” Poppy felt her heart tighten as a different tension built,

          “You do not want to…” his voice trailed off, gesturing at his torso with a pained look.

_________________________________________

          “Yes Charon I do, I want to see you, I want to touch you, I love you and I want you… just as you are” his eyes searched hers trying to figure out if she meant it, he knew she loved him but once hit with the reality would she feel the same?

          He decided that staying in the corner would be best, give her a chance to run if… but he couldn't even think about that. His earlier arousal still hung around him as he reluctantly lifted his top, unable to look at her. When he finally did he was actually surprised to see her staring at him, pupils blown out with lust and her full pink lips caught between her teeth.

__________________________________________

          Poppy didn't take her eyes off him, drinking in every little inch of skin that appeared as he lifted his top and threw it to the side. His flesh was patchy and rough, almost like soft sandpaper but the way she could see every flex of his strong muscles made her mouth water and every beat of his heart she could see in his exposed veins. She could feel him looking at her, appraising her reaction but she couldn't tear her eyes away from his taut chest.

          Eventually he must have decided he liked her reaction because he moved to remove his pants. As Poppy got her first view of him naked she gasped, he was not small anywhere and the way his impressive cock sat proud made her all the more aroused just looking at him. Her insides began to pulse at the thought of him inside her.

          Apparently emboldened by her wide eyes and the smile creeping onto her lips he took a step forward, out of his crumpled clothes. Another step and he grew bolder, grinning down at her as he neared. When he reached the bed his hands wrapped around her ankles again, pulling her down towards the end of the bed and eliciting a little squeal. He leaned over her, positioning himself above her, one hand supporting his weight while the other freely explored her body, her breasts, even her pert nipples. Leaning down he kissed her deeply, tongue gently parting her lips. Poppy squirmed, desperate for him, so aroused it was almost painful especially when he was so close it was like she was enveloped in him,

          “Charon!” she chided after he broke the kiss,

          “Yes?” the smarmy smirk on his lips told her he knew exactly what he was doing,

          “Stop teasing, I want you” he just smiled at her again, moving his hips so that the head of his cock just brushed against her wet lips. Poppy instinctively thrust towards him, “Please, please Charon I want you, please fuck me”

_____________________________________

          One hand moved to her thigh, pulling her into just the right position for him to sink into her. He grunted between clasped teeth as he felt her warm, wet cunt around him, he wanted to go slow but she was so welcoming he wasn't entirely sure he could. Especially when her legs wrapped around him and her heels pushed into the small of his back, urging him deeper.

           Instinct told him to fuck her into the mattress but this was about more than that, he wanted to savour this, enjoy every second, concentrate on how her skin felt, how she smelled, the noises she made. He wanted to lose himself in her, not just the sex but all of her. Damn she felt good though, especially when she angled her hips just so and he was able to press deeper into her.

_____________________________________

          Tired of waiting for him Poppy started to move her hips against him, her body rolling beneath him, testing his massive self control, trying to break it. And oh god she loved the delicious feeling of fullness, stretching her open. After too long her lover started to move, slowly at first, his lips on her collarbone and his hips thrusting against her, hitting spots she didn't know she had.

           She let a high pitched moan fall from her lips and, with a noise between a grunt and a growl he snapped. Biting into her skin he thrust against her hard, with desperation she felt herself as the coil in her groin started to tighten. She was aware she was panting, even crying out as he fucked her but she didn't care. When he untangled her legs from behind him and pushed them down onto the bed, almost bending her in half, he was suddenly hitting her deeper. She felt fuller, more intense than she ever had before and she loved it.

          As the coil snapped and she came she was aware she was screaming and shaking beneath him, her limbs tensing and vibrating against him. He sank his teeth into her calf as he came, throbbing inside her and dragging out her own orgasm. The pain and the pleasure mixed together in an ecstasy she could happily spend forever in. He lowered her legs to the bed and flopped down beside her, pulling her close where she laid chasing the clouds in her head until she felt herself drift off.

          “I love you” was the last thing she heard before falling asleep in his arms.

________________________________________

          “Morning” Charon mumbled into the top of her head. Poppys world right then consisted of him, the warm soft bed and the pink mist of sleep just falling away from her eyes,

           “Morning my love” he sat up, gently easing her down onto the bed before getting up to wash,

           “Ugh, don't go going all soppy on me” he teased, earning himself a thrown pillow to the face,

           “I'll be as soppy as I want sweetheart, cuddlebunny, sugarmuffin” a growl was all she got in return for that, making her laugh as she untangled her long limbs from the bed sheets and went through to the small bathroom.

          Once showered and dressed the two made to pack, going through their things and sorting what they wanted to sell and what they wanted to take. It felt so domestic and comfortable Poppy couldn't help the contented smile that played across her face. That's when she found the holotapes and her mind flashed back to the day before, she had found it in the citadel This little thing could hold the answers to why her father abandoned Charon and faked his own death after all it had to be in the file with the rest if his things for a reason.

           “Charon, we should listen to this” she held the holotapes out to him and he took them, inspecting the ‘to be deleted’ sticker on the side of each,

           “What are they?”

           “I found them at the citadel amongst my father's paperwork… it could hold some answers”

          “Or more questions”

          “So I shouldn't?”

          “It's your decision” He shrugged and went on packing. Poppy shook her head and set off to find a holodisk player somewhere private and Charon obviously followed.

           It turned out the private place they could listen was Butch's quarters where Charon glared until the man left grumbling.

_________________________________

          _A door opens in the medical room in the citadel and two men walk in, standing by the body on the gurney,_

_“So he will live?” one man asks,_

_“Yes Elder Lyons” answers the other,_

_“That opens up a great number of issues scribe” the Elder said, His voice heavy with worry,_

_“The world thinks he is dead”_

_“I know, best to keep it that way, at least until he fully recovers. The boy has done much for us, He should be given the chance to lead a normal life”_

_“What are you saying sir?”_

_“I know he has voiced a wish to disappear to many among our ranks, my daughter included, this could be his chance”_

_“What of the em… the other problem sir” the scribe seemed to stumble on his words,_

_“Ah the ghoul yes, if the Boy wishes to continue with the brotherhood the ghoul must be… disposed of”_

_“Do you suggest we kill it?” “No no that would simply make it a martyr in the boy's eyes and us undoubtedly the villains”_

_“Then what?” a long pause in which the Elder paced about the room,_

_“He did relinquish the contract to Sarah, perhaps we use that?”_

_“It has been pacing outside the gates for days, I doubt it would leave simply because the Boy no longer has his contract”_

_“No but it may leave if it believes the Boy is dead. Sarah would never agree but…” another pause, longer this time, “We give it to one of the men, one who follows orders unquestioningly and order him to tell it that it's previous master is dead. Then we simply send the soldier on a lengthy mission until this is no longer a problem”_

_“genius sir… but what about the boy? Would he not look for his ghoul?”_

_“Not if we convinced him it had abandoned him. We tell him that the ghoul was informed of his… extended illness, offered it's own contract to give to who it chose and it simply left with no word of goodbye”_

_“This may work… especially if the Boy remains unconscious for some time longer”_

_“Yes scribe, which means we should put this into action right away”_

_“Yes sir” the door opened and closed, leaving the Elder alone in the room,_

_“Daniel, you've done a lot for us, for the wasteland… for my daughter. I hope you decide to stay with us but either way now you are free from the burden of being the vault dweller_ ”

_____________________________________

           The pair sat in silence as the tape wound it's way through nothing but Daniel's quiet steady breathing. Poppy was the first one to crack, looking over at Charon but she never could read him,

           “What are you thinking Charon?” she asked him, almost afraid to hear the reply,

          “You have your answers” he stood, chair scraping along the floor and reached the door before Poppy found her voice again,

          “Charon please talk to me… are you angry with me?” she was ashamed at how her voice broke,

          “No… not you”

          “Who then?”

          “WHO DO YOU THINK? THE BROTHERHOOD” he yelled in her face, One arm gesturing violently in the gauge direction if the citadel, “IF THEY HADN'T… if they hadn't tricked us I would have been there with him. He wouldn't have died, you wouldn't have lost your family and been sold and forced to fight… I wouldn't have spent years stuck under the brotherhood's thumb. Think about it Poppy, we could have both been happy without their interference”

          “I'm glad they did”

          “WHAT?” he rounded on her and for the first time Poppy was actually a little scared of him. The fear on her face must have woken him a little, He took a deep breath and appeared to calm down,

          “I just mean… well of course I'm not glad my parents died or you had to put up with the brotherhood or any of that stuff but… if it hadn't been this way, if I'd grown up thinking you were uncle Charon then we wouldn't be together now. I love you, no matter the fucked up path we took to get here I wouldn't trade it for anything” he visibly deflated all the fight leaving him,

           “I… I understand… I think… I think I'm glad too” he took her hand in his, “What Is on the other tape?”

           “I don't know… should we?” she hovered her hand over the tape and Charon nodded. Swapping the tapes and pressing play the first thing they heard was a world weary sigh,

          _“Charon” came a man's voice, followed by a heavy silence_

            “Is that him?” poppy asked her partner, he nodded and she marvelled at the first time she heard her father's voice,

          _“If you ever return… I understood why you left. I gave up your contract, that must have hurt but… but I hope you enjoyed our time together” another pause and a sigh “the Brotherhood told me they gave you your contract, I know how it works, You couldn't wait for me and it's not your fault”_

_“I asked them to give you this if you are ever seen again. I don't entirely trust them but I hope they will at least do this for me. I have plans, a quiet life, a little farm maybe even a family. You would find it endlessly boring” Daniel laughed at this, but it was full of bitterness not real humour, “there will always be a place for you there if you want it. You're my best friend and you will always have a place in my life even if you don't have that kind of control over your own”_

_“Look Charon, I have to go. I miss you and I hope this gets to you in time to come find me. I hope that one day I see you again…. Goodbye old friend”_

           The ghoul looked stoic as he always did but Poppy knew him and under that shell there was something else, something deep,

          “Are you Ok?” she asked him, watching the small movements in his face with concern,

          “Yes”

          “Are you really?”

          “No, but I don't know how I feel. He cared, that's good but I spent so many years not knowing that… so much wasted time”

           “I'm sorry Charon but I promise we won't waste anymore” she placed a hand on his shoulder and he looked up at her, for once the sadness plain on his face, “this feels, anticlimactic”

          “Yes, you have your answers but it didn't change anything”

          “At least now we know”

          “Now we know…. What now?”

          “Now… what do you think about going home?”

          “Our home?”

          “Our home… together”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's it, the end.
> 
> I struggled to give these two a suitably smutty and loving ending. I wanted filth and nastiness with a combination of slow and caring... it's not something I'm that good at.
> 
> Chances are this pair will reappear at some point in the future because apparently I can't stop writing fallout fanfiction. I need a new thing to write fanfictiin about.

**Author's Note:**

> As with everything I write please comment if there is anything that doesn't feel right or sticks out like a sore thumb. Also if there's any mistakes I haven't spotted.
> 
> Oh and if you really like something... That too.


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